Three Precautions for Plastic Mold Making
First,Don’t just focus on product design and neglect plastic mold manufacturing.
When developing products or trial production of new products, some users tend to focus on product development and development at the initial stage, ignoring the communication with plastic mold manufacturers. After the preliminary determination of the product design scheme, contact with the mold manufacturer in advance has two advantages:
1. It can ensure that the products designed by ※ have a good forming process, and will not modify the finalized design because the parts are difficult to process.
2. The mold maker can make design preparation in advance to prevent improper consideration in a hurry from affecting the construction period.
3. To make high-quality plastic molds, only the close cooperation between the supplier and the demander can ultimately reduce the cost and shorten the cycle.
Second,Don’t just look at the price, but consider the quality, cycle and service in an all-round way.
1. There are many kinds of moulds, which can be roughly divided into ten categories. Different types of dies are selected for forming according to different requirements of part materials, physical and chemical properties, mechanical strength, dimensional accuracy, surface finish, service life, economy, etc.
2. The molds with high precision requirements need to be processed by high-precision CNC machine tools, and the mold materials and forming processes have strict requirements. CAD/CAE/CAM mold technology is also needed to design and analyze.
3. Some parts have special requirements during molding, and the mold also needs to use advanced processes such as hot runner, gas assisted molding, nitrogen cylinder, etc.
4. The manufacturer shall have CNC, EDM, wire cutting machine tools and CNC profiling milling equipment, high-precision grinder, high-precision three coordinate measuring instrument, computer design and relevant software.
5. In general, whether the machine tool has a blank holder mechanism, even an edge lubricant, multi station progressive, etc. should be considered for large stamping dies (such as automobile covering die). In addition to the punching tonnage, the punching times, feeding devices, machine tools and mold protection devices should also be considered.
6. The manufacturing methods and processes of the above molds are not available and mastered by every enterprise. When selecting a cooperative manufacturer, we must understand its processing capability. It depends not only on hardware equipment, but also on management level, processing experience and technical strength.
7. For the same set of molds, there is sometimes a big gap between quotations from different manufacturers. You should not pay more than the cost of the mold value, nor less than the cost of the mold. Mold manufacturers, like you, should make reasonable profits in business. Customizing a set of molds with a much lower price will be the beginning of trouble. Users must start from their own requirements and comprehensively measure.
Third,Avoid multi head cooperation and try to integrate plastic mold production and product processing
1. With qualified molds (qualified test pieces), it is not necessarily possible to produce qualified products in batches. This is mainly related to the selection of the processing machine, the forming process (forming temperature, forming time, etc.) and the technical quality of the operator.
2. With a good mold, there should also be a good forming process. It is better to work together in a coordinated manner and try to avoid multi head cooperation. If the conditions are not met, one party should be selected to be fully responsible, and it must be clearly written at the time of contracting.