Five factors to promote the rapid development of home appliance molds

Home appliance products are becoming larger and larger, and the "one-mold multi-cavity" developed to improve production efficiency has also resulted in the increasing size of home appliance molds; at the same time, the rapid development of home appliance electronics has also brought about the miniaturization and precision of parts. , The machining accuracy tolerance of some molds is required to be below 1 μm. Therefore, only by actively adopting advanced equipment and improving the level of mold manufacturing can significant economic benefits be achieved.

1. Extensive use of high-speed cutting technology High-speed cutting is generally used for large home appliance cover molds, and its surface machining accuracy can reach 0.01mm. The mold surface after high-speed milling and finishing can be used with only a little polishing, which saves a lot of time for grinding and polishing. The high-speed cutting process greatly shortens the molding cycle, thereby improving the market competitiveness of the product. European and American mold companies use CNC high-speed milling, most of which are five-axis linkage, and the spindle speed is generally 15000-30000r/min. In addition, European and American mold companies also attach great importance to equipment renewal, and the equipment depreciation period is generally 4-5 years. Adding CNC high-speed milling machines is one of the key points of equipment investment in mold enterprises. 2. High-speed scanning machine and mold scanning system The high-speed scanning machine and mold scanning system provide many functions required from scanning the model or object to processing the desired model, which greatly shortens the development and manufacturing cycle of the mold. Some fast scanning systems can be quickly installed on the existing CNC milling machine type machining centers to realize fast data collection, automatic generation of processing programs of various CNC systems, and CAD data in different formats for reverse engineering in mold manufacturing. The mold scanning system has been successfully applied in industries such as home appliances in Europe and the United States. Equipment in this regard, such as the high-speed scanner (CYCLON SERIES2) from Renishaw, UK, can realize the complementary advantages of laser probe and contact probe. The laser scanning accuracy is 0.05mm, and the contact probe scanning accuracy is 0.02mm. 3. Further development of hot runner and gas-assisted mold More than 80% of the plastic molds produced by many foreign plastic mold factories use hot runner technology, and the effect is very obvious. Many European and American companies have been able to successfully use gas-assisted technology in the molds of TV casings, washing machine casings, and some thick-walled plastic parts. Gas-assisted injection molding has the advantages of low injection pressure, small product warpage, good surface quality, and easy to form products with large differences in wall thickness, which can greatly reduce costs on the premise of ensuring product quality. 4. Combination of rapid prototyping technology and rapid molding technology The competition in the home appliance market is increasingly fierce, and product upgrading is accelerating. The rapid prototyping technology and rapid molding technology are combined to apply to mold manufacturing, that is, use rapid prototyping technology to manufacture prototypes of product parts, and then quickly manufacture molds based on prototypes. The application of RP and RT technology from mold design to manufacturing requires only about 1/3 and 1/4 of the traditional processing method and cost. Many Home Appliance Mold manufacturers in Europe and the United States use rapid prototyping to cast silicone rubber molds for a small number of plastic parts, which are very suitable for trial production of products. Some European and American countries also use aluminum to make injection molds, which can shorten the injection cycle by 25-30%, greatly reduce the weight of the mold, and shorten the grinding and polishing time by half. Germany has developed a reinforced plastic, which is used to manufacture the cavity and core of plastic molds, with a lifespan of more than 100,000 pieces. At the European Mould Exhibition, rapid prototyping technology and rapid molding technology occupy a very prominent position. There are various types of rapid prototyping equipment such as SLA, SLS, FDM and LOM, as well as institutions and companies that provide prototype manufacturing services. 5. High-quality mold materials and advanced surface treatment technology The development trend of mold steel in Europe and America is that carbon tool steel, low alloy tool steel, high alloy tool steel, a series of new mold materials have appeared one after another, and the alloying degree of mold standard steel is also increasing. For example, in the United States, all 15 kinds of hot work die steel alloy elements are greater than 5%, and there are 10 kinds of alloy elements greater than 10%, and the amount accounts for 80%.