Mould Manufacturing Process

1. Mould Design
The design is 3D, basic mold design information will be present, such as mold size, gate way, parting line, ejection way, cavities layout, mechanical design etc. Depends on the complexity, a complete mold design would need 3-7 days. Some of the complex projects require mold flow analysis or frequent updates of custom design, it could take much more time.
Detailed drawing would help your company to do maintenance at your facility very easy as well, such as modification on mold or wearing parts changing.

2. Mould Steel Purchasing
Mould steel can be ordered immediately after design get confirm, if mould need hot runner system could take much longer time to get back, all of this procedure need to be track closely if you don’t want to cause any delay on next step.

3. Mould Rough Machining
The mould steel need first to be sized, milling, drilling, lather are the main process way to get the rough shape or the cavity / core. Normally 0.15-0.3 mm steel left for precision machining later.

4. Heat Treatment
After rough machining, internal stress would be created during machining, do heat treatment to get certain hardness and internal balance, such as H13, 2316, it usually need to be harden to HRC45-48, but some of the steel don’t need it, like P20 etc.

5. Mould Finish Machining
To get designed dimension, the CNC process of precision machining is much slower than rough machining, also the steel hardness is much higher.
.CNC 3 to 8 axis high speed milling, turning;
.CNC Grinding;
.Conventional and CNC machining centers;
.EDM machines;
.CNC programming with Computer Aided Manufacturing;

6. Finish and Fitting
After all the components are finished and prepared, mold maker collects them all and assemble them by following the design drawing. core or cavity need to be polisheing.

7. Mould Trial
Mould on the injection moulding machine to the trial. plastic parts and injection parameter send to customer.