Plastic Mold Making
To achieve the desired mold productivity, many elements of plastic mold making and design must be intelligently incorporated. The basics of design for plastic mold making must be the starting point and then added to that, decisions made about a whole host of different design options must be made to work in concert with the basics to come up with an optimized mold design.
Everyone is interested in having the lowest cost tool, but in plastic mold making, other considerations must also be included. Among these is the mould’s ability to be readily maintained, and kept in optimum condition throughout the mould’s useful life. A very low initial cost tool may prove to have a larger overall cost of operation; if for instance, lengthy maintenance procedures are required to keep the tool in operational condition throughout its life.
There are two general types of cavity and core inserts that should be considered when plastic mould making: Integrated and Nested or Split Structure. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so the decision about which to choose when plastic mold making depends on the application and the required useful life of the mold.
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Integrated Cavity
The integrated cavity is cut directly into the mold base plates. It requires the fewest number of parts and is the simplest to produce, so often (though not always) this is the least expensive to produce in terms of initial investment. However, as stated, this is not always the least expensive alternative when considering the cost of the tool over the life of the part.
Some of the Advantages of Integrated Cavity Mold Making include:
• More practical for large or odd-shaped parts, such as automotive body panels and similarly shaped parts.
• Least amount of machining – so lower initial cost.
• Least amount of mold materials used – so lower materials cost.
Conversely, some of the Disadvantages of Integrated Cavity Mold Making include:
• Requires larger, more expensive machines to make the molds, and no components may be made in parallel, so they often have a longer lead time to produce.
• Most costly, difficult and longer lead time to modify in the event revisions are required.
• Costly and difficult to repair with longer down times when the mold wears or is damaged during its useful life.
Nested Cavity
When making a nested cavity plastic mold, cutouts are made in the mold base to receive nested parts that form the mold cavities that produce the finished parts. While this has more components than the Integrated Cavity type, often the advantages of plastic mold making using this method far outweigh the disadvantages.
Advantages to using Nested Cavity plastic molds making:
Complex geometries may be more easily formed when using nested cavities, for example, multi-pin electrical connectors are nearly always made with nested cavity tools.
Improved materials may be more easily incorporated into nested cavity molds for reduced wear and improved mold temperature control ability.
Damaged or worn components can be quickly and inexpensively replaced to minimize downtime.
Some of the disadvantages of using Nested Cavity plastic mold making include:
• Higher initial material costs
• More machining required in some cases, as both the mold base and the cavities require precision manufacture. (However, most of the machining may be performed on smaller, faster and less expensive machines.)
Consult with your mold maker to decide which of these two different plastic mold making philosophies are most suitable for your specific application. if you want to know more about us please got to our home page to know more about us