3D Printing Is Becoming More And More Widely Used In Mold Manufacturing

In order to adapt to the rapid update and repeated calculation of the product, the production cycle of the mold is continuously compressed. By using the 3D printing process, a 3D shapeable water path can be made inside the mold, thereby greatly improving the cooling efficiency of the mold and shortening the injection cycle.

The application advantages of metal 3D printing on the mold can be summarized as: shortening the cycle, stabilizing the quality, reducing the stress cracking deformation, thereby improving the overall quality of the mold, saving the cost of injection molding and enhancing the competitiveness of the enterprise. At present, metal 3D printing technology has been deeply used in mass production of injection molds in Europe, America and Japan, such as large automobile groups including Toyota, and HP like office supplies, which use 3D waterway technology to shorten cooling. Time and methods to improve the quality of the product have become the norm.

As a benchmark enterprise in China’s injection mold industry, Dongjiang Mould Co., Ltd. also has a deep research on mold 3D printing waterway. A practical case is: the number of cavities is 2, the injection molding material is PC, and the customer requires a molding cycle of 25 s. Since the molding temperature of the PC material is relatively high, the cooling water path must be sufficiently sufficient and uniform. Dongjiang Mould designed the 3D-printed waterway for this product. At the same time, the maximum temperature of the traditional waterway is 103°C, and the maximum temperature of the 3D-printed waterway is 94°C. When the product reaches the ejector temperature, the traditional waterway production cycle is 21.7 seconds, the 3D conformal waterway production cycle is 17 seconds, and the cycle is increased by 21.7%. According to the calculation, a set of molds can save the injection cost by 110,000 yuan per month, and the monthly economy The benefit increased by RMB 94,000.

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