China OEM Metal Insert Molding Products - Mold making – Mestech

Mold making & manufacturing is an very important industry in modern manufacturing industry. It provides important process equipment for large-scale, high efficiency and high quality industrial production.

What is mold?

Mold (mould, die) is known as the “mother of industry”, which is an important process equipment to achieve high precision, high efficiency and large-scale production in modern manufacturing industry. In the production of mould industry, various moulds and tools are used to obtain the required products by injection, blow moulding, extrusion, mold casting or forging, smelting, stamping and other methods. In short, the mould is a tool used to make moulding objects. This tool is composed of various parts, and different moulds are composed of different parts. It mainly realizes the processing of the shape of the object by changing the physical state of the forming material. It is known as the “mother of industry”.

What is mold manufacturing?

Almost all molds are made of metal, and 90% of them are made of steel.

Under the action of external force, the steel billet becomes a tool for manufacturing with specific shape and size. It is widely used in stamping, mold forging, cold heading, extrusion, powder metallurgy parts pressing, pressure casting, as well as engineering plastics, rubber, ceramics and other products of compression or injection molding. The mold has a specific contour or inner cavity shape, and the blank can be separated according to the contour shape (blanking) by applying the contour shape with the edge. The shape of the inner cavity can be used to obtain the corresponding three-dimensional shape of the billet. Mould generally includes two parts: movable mold and fixed mold (or punch and concave mold), which can be separated and combined. When the parts are separated, the blanks are injected into the mold cavity to form when they are closed. Mold is a precise tool with complex shape and bearing the bulging force of billet. It has high requirements on structural strength, rigidity, surface hardness, surface roughness and processing accuracy. The development level of mold production is one of the important marks of the level of mechanical manufacturing.

The process of mold manufacturing includes: mold design, mold processing, mold inspection and test shot, mold modification and repair, and mold maintenance.

Mould manufacturing processing is usually realized through forging, cutting, heat treatment and assembly and other processes. In order to ensure the manufacturing quality of the mold and reduce the production cost, the material should have good malleability, cutting machinability, hardenability and grindability, and should also have small oxidation, decarbonization sensitivity and quenching deformation cracking tendency. Cutting takes up 70% of the workload of mold processing. The most critical step is to obtain the cavity which meets the requirements of shape, dimension accuracy and surface quality, as well as all the mechanisms.

The mold making process

The steel blank for making the mould has been rolled and formed in the steel plant, and the mould plant can directly choose to purchase. Mold making is to make these steel blanks into molds that can produce products in mass production. The manufacture of the mould includes mould design, machining and assembly of the mould core and mould base.

1. Mold design is completed by professional engineers. Mold design is the standard and basis of the whole mold production. According to the requirements of product structure and dimensional surface accuracy, application occasions and expected output, as well as the configuration of injection molding machine, the engineer must reasonably select steel for each part of the mold and determine the structure and process of the mold. The rationality of mold design determines the manufacturing difficulty, cost, service life, productivity and product quality of the mold.

Mold is a kind of expensive equipment. In the design, our engineers use software to analyze and simulate the parts distribution, flow path, injection point and even the structure of the parts.

2. Machining of mould. Mould billet is processed by machine tool according to engineer’s design and process documents. Generally, the cutting machine tools and equipment used to make molds include CNC, EDM, WEDM, lathe, grinder, polishing machine, etc. Advanced and precise machine tools can greatly improve the mold accuracy, shorten the production cycle and reduce the cost. Different types of molds use different combinations of machine tools: injection molds and die-casting molds often use CNC, EDM and WEDM. Stamping molds and extrusion molds often use CNC and WEDM

3. Mold assembly. The assembly of the mould depends on the technicians. It includes die core, slide block, guide post, ejection mechanism, matching between die frame and motor, hot runner assembly, as well as the part that can not be cut, and the final overall assembly. The higher the accuracy of machining, the less the workload of die assembly, the shorter the production cycle and the lower the cost. After the completion of the assembly of the die, it is necessary to test, verify, debug and improve the die until it can produce qualified products with other quantities.

Typical mold making process

Mestech company is mainly engaged in plastic mold manufacturing and product injection, as well as hardware molds (metal die-casting die, stamping die) manufacturing and metal parts production.