In this article, you will learn what you should definitely consider when designing an injection mould. An injection mold is a permanent mold that is used to produce components with the help of an injection molding machine. This mold is usually made of metal and creates the part over a cavity, which replicates the structure of the surface as well as the shape of the required part. In plastics processing and especially in plastic injection, the dynamic growth of this production process is the greatest in today's world.
With the help of this process, manufacturers of plastic parts nowadays produce large quantities of a component at low cost. The tool itself is the most expensive point here. On the one hand, even with uncomplicated tools, the threshold of economic viability is only reached after a few thousand components. On the other hand, however, the tools can produce up to several million components until they reach their wear limit. The use of one and the same tool therefore reduces the manufacturing costs for large quantities.
In the injection moulding process, the injection moulding tool is filled with heated, liquid plastic under high pressure. Immediately afterwards, the plastic cools down and hardens in the injection moulding tool. After cooling, the moulded part is then removed or ejected from the mould. The injection moulding tool acts as the core element because in this process of the procedure it is the tool itself that brings the liquid plastic and more and more often also the compound with solid, additional parts into the final form. The injection moulding process thus enables the production of complex different components with a wide variety of shapes with a wide variety of sizes and component weights. These range from a few tenths of a gram to a hundred and fifty kilograms. The construction of injection moulds is becoming increasingly popular in the industry, as series production can be realised much more efficiently.
Materials for the design of injection moulds
The construction of an injection moulding tool is usually made in steel. The tools should be made of wear-resistant materials such as quenched and tempered or hardened tool steel. Hard metals are also frequently used for the construction of injection moulding tools. It is important that the materials are largely wear-free, as a tool design for injection molded components is only efficient if the tool lasts a long time.
In steel mould construction, and thus also in injection moulding, a distinction is usually made between interchangeable moulds, jaw moulds and standard moulds. The standard moulds are very well suited for a wide range of applications and provide a good guide when starting the design of the injection moulding train. Jaw moulds, for example, are suitable for components with a large undercut. Prototypes and small series in the design with injection moulding are produced with interchangeable moulds. This basic knowledge and our decades of experience are therefore important for us to develop the suitable mould for your injection moulding project.
Challenges of injection mould design
Injection molds are ideally suited for series production, as they allow large quantities of components to be manufactured within a very short time without too much effort. High quantities lead to corresponding savings in manufacturing costs. However, this is only the case if the injection moulding tool has been correctly developed, dimensioned and tested at the start of the process. We check the correct design and functionality of a mould by means of appropriate simulations, among other things. This can be Moldflow simulations for the analysis of the injection moulding process itself, but also finite element simulations to determine the forces and deformations under load on the injection mould.
As the moulds are constantly exposed to high loads during component production, a durable design must be taken into account in the design of the injection mould in any case. Years of experience, the right tools and the corresponding process-related expertise therefore make us the right contact for your production planning.
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