Table of Contents
Traditional mold-making plays a vital role in several industries, especially plastic and metal molding. Despite the rise of smart manufacturing and 3D printing, traditional mold manufacturing remains essential for high-volume production due to its precision, low cost, stability, and durability.
This article explores the production process of traditional mold manufacturing, analyzes its pros and cons, and discusses the advantages and future trends of modern mold manufacturing technology to help industry players understand the current status and challenges.
Traditional mold manufacturing enterprise production process
The mold manufacturing process involves several stages, from order receipt to design, production, testing, repair, and archiving. The following is a detailed description:
1. Acceptance of the mission statement
The first step in mold manufacturing is receiving the assignment, typically from the part designer. Contents include:
Drawings of the part to be made: These include official, signed drawings specifying the required plastic grade, transparency, etc.
Part specification or technical requirements: Includes detailed requirements for the production process.
Production output: Specifies the quantity to be produced.
Plastic parts samples: Samples are used for reference to help mold designers understand the parts’ requirements.
2. Collecting, analyzing,g and digesting original information
Before designing a mold, collecting and analyzing information related to the manufactured parts is necessary. Including:
Drawing of the part: Analyze the part’s geometric structure, post-processing needs (e.g., painting, plating, gluing), processability, dimensional accuracy, and other requirements.
Process information: confirm the rationality of the selected molding method, equipment type,e and mold structure.
Molding materials: select the appropriate plastic to meet its fluidity, strength, elasticity, ty, and other requirements.
Molding equipment: select the appropriate mold structure according to the type of equipment.
3. Determine the molding method and equipment
In the mold design, the choice of molding methods and equipment is crucial:
Molding method: Decide whether to use the direct pressure, casting, or injection methods.
Molding equipment selection: Select equipment based on the injection molding machine specifications, injection capacity, clamping pressure, and other requirements.
4. Specific structural program
The designer must design the mold structure based on the task statement and process requirements.
Mold type: Choose different types such as pressing mold, casting mold, injection mold, etc.
Cavity arrangement: Determine the number and arrangement of cavities based on part characteristics, batch size, and mold manufacturing ease.
Parting surface: Determine the location of the parting surface to facilitate mold processing and molding operations.
Pouring system and exhaust system: Design suitable main sprue, sub-gate, and gate to ensure smooth plastic flow.
Ejector method: Choose a suitable ejector method (ejector rod, ejector tube, push plate, etc.).
5. Drawing the mold
The mold design drawing is a key part of mold manufacturing. Designers need to draw assembly and parts drawings. The specific requirements are as follows:
General assembly drawings: Including the mold structure, pouring system, exhaust system, parting surface, shape, auxiliary tools, etc.
Parts drawings: Disassemble the assembly drawing and create part drawings sequentially to ensure sizes and structures meet requirements.
6. Proofreading, reviewing, tracing, and sending to sunshine
Proofreading and reviewing the design drawings are the key steps to ensure the quality of mold manufacturing:
Self-proofreading: check whether the mold parts’ material, hardness, and dimensional accuracy meet the requirements of the manufactured parts.
Drawing review: A comprehensive review of the molding equipment, mold structure, and processing performance to ensure accuracy.
Tracing: draw the drawings according to the standard to ensure correct dimensions and technical requirements.
Sending to the Sunn: After the drawings are completed, they must be professionally reviewed and confirmed.
7. Drawing of all parts
Split the detailed drawing of each part from the total assembly drawing of the mold to ensure accuracy during processing:
Graphic Requirements: View selection is reasonable, and labeling dimensions are orderly and complete.
Surface roughness: indicates the roughness requirements of the part.
Information such as part name, material, and heat treatment requirements should be clearly labeled.
8. Ensure the accuracy of designs and drawings
Ensure the accuracy of design and drawings to avoid errors affecting subsequent production:
Relationship between the mold and the drawing of the plastic part: Ensure that the size and shape of the mold and the manufactured part are consistent.
Molding equipment suitability: check whether the performance of the injection molding machine meets the mold requirements.
Mold structure feasibility: including parting surface, ejection method, heating and cooling system, etc.
Parts processing performance: check whether parts’ geometric structure and processing are reasonable.
9. Mold trial and mold repair
The mold test is to test the mold design and molding process is appropriate for the key steps:
Nold trial: a preliminary test of the mold, observing the quality of molded parts.
Mold Repair: Adjust the mold design based on trial results to fix defects like weld marks and shrinkage holes.
10. Organize data for archiving
After the mold design is completed and passed to the trial, all technical data must be organized and archived.
Archiving information: including the mission statement, design drawings, technical instructions, inspection records, trial mold repair records, etc.
Maintenance and storage: Ensure the molds will not be damaged when stored and treat them well for anti-rust.
Advantages of traditional mold manufacturing
Traditional mold manufacturing has many significant advantages, especially in mass production and the high precision needs of the application. The following are the main advantages of conventional mold manufacturing:
1. High precision and stability
Traditional mold manufacturing uses precision equipment like CNC mills, lathes, and EDM to achieve high accuracy and ensure excellent dimensional consistency, especially for complex shapes. This ensures that the final product is stable in size and shape and suitable for mass production.
2. Suitable for mass production
The traditional mold-making process is mature and perfect, especially suitable for mass production. Once a mold is made, it can be used repeatedly in production and can withstand thousands of cycles. This makes traditional molds extremely cost-effective for mass production, especially in plastic molding and metal casting areas.
3. Durable
Conventional molds are made of hard, wear-resistant materials like alloy and hardened steel, ensuring long service life and durability even in high-temperature, high-pressure, and high-impact environments.
4. Suitable for complex shapes
Traditional mold processing technology is mature and capable of producing very complex geometries. Turning, milling, and EDM can precisely process complex shapes to meet high-precision design needs.
5. Lower production cost (in large-scale production)
Traditional molds can significantly reduce the cost per piece in mass production. Although mold design and manufacturing require a high initial investment, the unit cost of the finished product decreases significantly once the mold is complete, especially in injection molding and die casting, where mass production quickly reduces costs.
Disadvantages of traditional mold manufacturing
Traditional mold manufacturing, though widely used, has significant disadvantages, including:
1. High upfront investment
Traditional mold manufacturing involves high upfront costs, including materials, equipment, labor, and process design. For complex molds, the design and processing cycle is lengthy and requires a high initial investment, and modifying the mold is costly once the design is set.
2. Long processing cycle
Traditional mold production is time-consuming, often taking weeks or months due to multiple stages like design, material procurement, processing, and assembly. These stages delay time to market and impact production cycles.
3. Difficulty in design modification
Once a traditional mold is in production, any adjustments or modifications typically require reworking or repair, especially for metal molds. These changes are complex, costly, time-consuming, and may affect mold accuracy and lifespan.
4. Poor adaptability
Traditional molds are designed for specific products, making them less adaptable to design changes. With long ROI and slow adjustments, they struggle to meet market demands in short product design cycles.
5. Environmental impact
Traditional mold manufacturing uses significant amounts of cutting fluids, lubricants, and chemicals, which impact the environment. Mold processing also generates waste, exhaust, and noise, contributing to pollution, and current environmental measures haven’t eliminated these effects.
6. Not suitable for small-batch production
Traditional molds in small batch production have high initial costs and can’t be quickly diluted. For small-lot, multi-variety production, they are less economical and struggle to compete with modern technologies like additive manufacturing.
Production characteristics of advanced mold manufacturing enterprises
As market competition intensifies and product demand diversifies, traditional mold manufacturing companies are increasingly exposed to flexibility, responsiveness, and fault tolerance shortcomings. Many still rely on a pyramid hierarchical structure, with serial planning, scheduling, and control, which struggles to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions and dynamic product demands.
In this traditional mode, a single link failure can collapse the entire production system, impacting efficiency and quality. Therefore, modern mold manufacturers need a more flexible, efficient, and fault-tolerant system to adapt to changing market demands and complex production environments.
1. Agile Manufacturing Enterprise Characteristics
Agile Manufacturing (Agile Manufacturing) is in the globalized market, and competition has emerged. It has the following main features:
Rapid Response Capability: Agile Manufacturing enterprises can quickly produce competitive products according to customers’ demands with the shortest delivery time and the most economical approach.
Flexible Organizational Structure: The enterprise’s internal and external resources can be quickly mobilized to form a dynamic organizational structure to cope with changes in the market and the production process and enhance responsiveness.
Highly flexible and reconfigurable production equipment: The production equipment and its software system are highly flexible and reconfigurable, enabling the enterprise to adjust the production process flexibly according to different needs.
Continuous innovation ability: Agile manufacturing enterprises have strong innovation abilities, relying on innovative employees and management mechanisms to maintain their competitive advantage.
Strategic Dependence: Form a close strategic dependence between the enterprise and the users to face the market challenges together, realize mutual benefits, and achieve a win-win situation.
2. Characteristics of Intelligent Manufacturing System
Intelligent Manufacturing System (IMS) gradually realizes the intelligence of the manufacturing process by integrating advanced information technology, automation technology, and artificial intelligence. Intelligent Manufacturing System has the following characteristics:
Self-regulation ability: An Intelligent Manufacturing System can analyze, judge, and plan its behavior independently, with a certain degree of autonomy and self-management ability.
Human-machine integration: Although smart manufacturing relies on a high degree of automation, it still requires human experts to participate in some parts of the process, especially in system optimization and decision-making.
Virtual manufacturing technology: intelligent manufacturing systems use virtual manufacturing technology to support virtual simulation and model validation to optimize product design and manufacturing processes.
Self-organizing ability: the system is capable of autonomously composing the manufacturing structure according to the task demand, ensuring the flexibility and adaptability of the production process.
Learning and Optimization Capability: An intelligent manufacturing system can self-learn, self-optimize, and self-repair, continuously improving production efficiency and quality and reducing downtime.
3. Trends in modern manufacturing systems
Although there are differences in the realization path of different advanced manufacturing models, they have many common points regarding corporate goals, management models, operation mechanisms, and production processes. The following are the development trends of modern manufacturing systems:
From data-driven to information/knowledge-driven: Modern manufacturing systems are shifting from data-based to information—and knowledge-driven environments, emphasizing enterprise skills, consent, uses, and application semantics.
Scientific production management: Manufacturing systems are integrating with production management, shifting from relying solely on equipment automation to focusing more on scientific management and control of the production process to improve productivity.
User demand-driven: the goal of the manufacturing system shifts from purely corporate interest-driven to focus on user demand, including price, quality, delivery, after-sales service, and even personalized demand satisfaction.
Information—and knowledge-driven management: The production management mode is shifting from the management mode based on labor and capital to the management mode based on information and knowledge, with more emphasis on the integration and utilization of the enterprise’s internal and external information.
Networked Collaborative Production Model: Through networked cooperation, decentralized SMEs can form production alliances to achieve short-cycle, quick-response, large-scale, and low-cost production goals.
Human Innovation Driven: Manufacturing systems are gradually shifting from being technology-driven to focusing more on human innovation capabilities, especially on transforming human knowledge into reusable structured knowledge to drive system innovation.
Self-adaptive and intelligent manufacturing system: Manufacturing systems gradually develop towards self-learning, self-adaptive, self-organizing, and self-maintaining intelligent systems, combining with research in computer science and technology frontiers to promote the application and development of intelligent manufacturing.
Improvement of Workshop-level Production Management System: Workshop-level production management and control systems are the foundation of modern manufacturing systems, and the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is gradually becoming autonomous in parallel engineering to improve innovation ability and production efficiency.
Resource Optimization and Green Manufacturing: Modern manufacturing systems pay more attention to the efficient use of resources, emphasize recycling and regeneration, and are committed to building a green and environmentally friendly manufacturing system to meet the needs of sustainable development.
Advantages of advanced mold manufacturing
With the global manufacturing industry’s development, traditional mold manufacturing can no longer meet the demand for high-efficiency, high-precision, and personalized products. Advanced mold manufacturing, integrating modern manufacturing, information, automation, and intelligent technologies, improves efficiency, quality, and flexibility to meet market and customer needs better.
1. Improved production efficiency
Advanced mold manufacturing technology greatly improves production efficiency, especially in mass and complex mold manufacturing. Advanced processing techniques like high-precision CNC machining, laser cutting, and EDM can significantly shorten production cycles, improving productivity by optimizing design and processing compared to traditional mold manufacturing methods.
Rapid prototyping (e.g., 3D printing) shortens mold prototype production or directly creates mold parts, reducing product development and validation cycles and accelerating overall production.
2. Enhance mold accuracy and quality
Advanced mold manufacturing technology can provide higher precision and better quality control during design and processing. CAD and CAM systems improve mold design accuracy, reducing manual errors.
Laser scanning and EDM technologies achieve micron-level accuracy, enabling precise machining of complex molds with fine details and ensuring high-quality standards, particularly in precision machinery, electronics, and automotive industries.
3. Increase design flexibility and customization ability
Advanced mold manufacturing technology is highly flexible and can be quickly customized to meet different product requirements. This is particularly important for products requiring small-batch production or special design requirements.
3D printing and rapid prototyping allow designers to quickly adjust molds, avoiding the time and cost waste of design changes in traditional manufacturing. This allows mold manufacturing to respond more flexibly to changes in market demand and can support personalized and customized production.
4. Shorten the product development cycle
Advanced manufacturing technology can greatly shorten the mold manufacturing process. For example, rapid prototyping technologies (e.g., FDM, SLA) enable mold prototypes and samples to be manufactured quickly, tested, and verified. This improves the speed of product development and reduces the time to market by reducing modifications and adjustments in the later stages of the production process through prototype verification.
Traditional mold manufacturing methods usually require multiple rounds of design, modification, and validation, while advanced manufacturing technologies can conduct multiple rapid iterations at the early stages of design to optimize the mold design, ensure the quality of the final product, and accelerate the development cycle.
5. Reduce production costs
Although the initial investment in advanced mold technology is high, it can significantly reduce long-term production costs by improving efficiency, reducing human intervention, and shortening production cycles.
Smart manufacturing technology reduces production costs by automating lines with robotics, minimizing manual errors and waste, and improving material efficiency.
6. Enhance the innovative ability of mold
Modern mold manufacturing technology enables designers to create more complex and innovative molds, overcoming the limitations of traditional methods. With CAD and CAM, designers can achieve high-precision molds with complex shapes that were previously difficult to make.
Additive manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing) enables the creation of molds with complex internal structures, which traditional casting or machining cannot achieve. This innovation helps companies develop products that meet market demand and offer greater functionality.
7. Enhanced Mold Maintainability and Longevity
Advanced mold manufacturing technology enhances mold design and production, improving maintainability and service life. Wear-resistant, high-strength material, ls, and advanced surface treatments boost durability, reducing downtime from wear and damage.
Intelligent manufacturing technology can monitor molds in real time, using sensors to collect operational data and provide early warnings of potential failures. This helps enterprises prevent production delays due to mold damage.
8. Realize green manufacturing
With the improvement of environmental protection requirements, modern mold manufacturing has gradually moved toward green manufacturing. Advanced mold manufacturing technology can effectively use resources and reduce energy consumption and waste emissions to achieve more environmentally friendly and sustainable production.
For example, additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology can reduce material waste through on-demand manufacturing, and in many cases, more environmentally friendly materials can be used. Meanwhile, smart manufacturing technologies help companies reduce their negative impact on the environment by optimizing production processes and reducing energy consumption.
Disadvantages of advanced mold manufacturing
Despite the significant advantages of advanced mold manufacturing technologies in terms of efficiency, quality, and flexibility, there are some drawbacks and challenges, especially in terms of initial investment, technological complexity,y and applicability. The following are some of the major drawbacks:
1. High initial investment costs
Advanced mold manufacturing technology often requires high initial investment, especially when introducing high-end equipment and technology. Equipment such as high-precision CNC processing machines, 3D printers, laser cutting machines, etc., and the software and systems that go with them, are often expensive. This can be a major obstacle to technological upgrading for some small and medium-sized enterprises.
2. High technical complexity and professional requirements
Adopting advanced manufacturing technologies requires enterprises to have a high level of technology and specialized knowledge. Many new technologies (e.g., smart manufacturing, additive manufacturing, etc.) rely on complex software and hardware support, requiring engineers and operators to have specialized technical skills. This puts high demands on enterprises’ training, technical support, and talent pool.
3. High cost of equipment maintenance and technology update
Advanced mold manufacturing technology requires additional investment not only in the initial investment in the existence of high co but also in the later maintenance of equipment and technology updates. The maintenance and upgrading of equipment involve more complex technology. If you can not keep up with technological advances, the equipment may become obsolete, leading to a decline in production efficiency. In addition, improper maintenance may also affect the stability of production.
4. Raw material selection and cost issues
Although advanced manufacturing technologies (e.g., 3D printing, additive manufacturing, etc.) can provide a wider range of material choices, these technologies often require specialized, high-cost raw materials. For example, certain additive manufacturing technologies require specific alloys or high-performance plastics, which are more expensive than traditional materials. In addition, certain manufacturing technologies require higher material handling, resulting in higher production costs.
5. Production speed and scale-up issues
While advanced mold manufacturing technologies can dramatically increase productivity in certain applications, their speed may still not be comparable to traditional mass production methods such as injection molding for high-volume production. Especially in high-volume mold production, advanced manufacturing techniques are often not as cost-effective as traditional methods, limiting their use in certain mass-production applications.
Application Prospects of Advanced Mold Manufacturing
Technological advancements have made advanced mold manufacturing essential in industries like automotive, electronics, medical, and aerospace. More companies are adopting this technology to boost competitiveness.
In the future, smart manufacturing, driven by AI, IoT, and 5G, will further enhance mold production, enabling faster market responses and innovation through efficient production, precise design, and flexible manufacturing.
Conclusion
Traditional mold manufacturing offers advantages in precision, stability, and mass production but limitations in flexibility, cycle time, and cost. As market demands and production methods evolve, advanced mold manufacturing technologies have replaced traditional methods due to their efficiency, precision, and flexibility.
In the future, with advancements in smart manufacturing, automation, and personalized demand, advanced mold manufacturing will become more widespread, driving the industry toward greater efficiency, intelligence, and environmental sustainability.