One of the important features of molds compared with other mechanical products is the high technical content and the large net output value. The rapid development of the plastics industry has enabled China's plastic molds to develop at a faster rate than the overall development of the mold industry. In recent years, the growth rate has been maintained at more than 15%. As more and more applications of plastic products, mold requirements are getting higher and higher, the traditional mold design methods have been unable to adapt to the upgrading of plastic products and improve the quality requirements.
Although China's plastic mold has made great progress, but at present in China's plastic mold is still relying on low prices to win the international market, most of the high-grade plastic mold depends on imports, mold accuracy, cavity surface roughness, production cycle, life expectancy and other indicators and foreign advanced There is still a large gap between the level, precision processing equipment in the proportion of mold processing equipment is still relatively low, CAD / CAE / CAM technology penetration is not high, many advanced mold technology is not widely used.
In China, most plastic mold enterprises also use traditional production methods, that is, before the formal production, designers use the experience and intuition to express the product on a two-dimensional plan paper. After the mold is assembled, it is necessary to repeatedly test the mold, which not only increases production. The cost also extends the product development cycle, and mold production relies too much on experience, making product quality extremely unstable. The new CAD integration technology integrates plastic molding design, mold design and analysis, mold CNC machining, polishing and trial molding, rapid prototyping and other mold manufacturing. The design and manufacturing cycle of the mold reduces the risk of mold design, reduces debugging costs, and ensures the quality of the plastic mold.
Using CAD technology to design plastic molds, the designer can directly build a three-dimensional model of the product on the computer, simulate the entire injection molding process on the computer, accurately predict the filling, holding pressure, and cooling of the melt, and stress in the product. Distribution, molecular and fiber orientation distribution, product shrinkage and warpage, etc., not only can quickly improve the design efficiency, but also can dynamically simulate and analyze the plastic injection mold cavity in the injection process flow, analysis of temperature and pressure changes, etc. The rationality of the mold structure and the rationality of the flow state allow the designer to find the problem as soon as possible, modify the parts and mold design in time, eliminate the error in the design stage, instead of waiting for the mold to be repaired after the mold, thus improving the trial mold Success rate, avoid mold scrapped, ensure quality and reduce costs. Many standard parts in the mold can be designed using CAD modeling methods, which can not only achieve data sharing, but also satisfy the user's modification at any time, making the design analysis of the mold fast, accurate, and efficient. This is a breakthrough in the mold design method and has significant technical and economic significance.
In recent years, in order to improve competitiveness, many mold enterprises in China have increased investment in mold manufacturing, introduced new technologies, and established manufacturing centers. However, the use of CAD technology is still not widely used. This has led to the production of domestic high-end, precision, and large-scale plastic molds. Serious shortages cause these molds to still import large quantities every year. However, the middle and low-grade plastic molds with low technical content are oversupplying.
Throughout the development of plastic molds in developed countries, maps have been achieved and CAD/CAE/CAM and other computer design methods have been used to achieve a precise and rapid mold production model. CAD technology has created tremendous productivity. Reforming traditional design concepts and operating modes, retrofitting traditional technologies with advanced CAD/CAE/CAM technologies, and improving the level of design and manufacturing of plastic molds should be an inevitable trend for China's plastic mold companies to change their current product structure.
Mold manufacturing urgently needs to break through traditional concepts
CAD/CAE/CAM technology, ie, computer-aided manufacturing technology, is an important mold advanced manufacturing technology, and is a key technology for transforming traditional molds with high-tech. In recent years, this technology has been applied by many domestic plastic mold enterprises, which greatly shortens the mold design cycle and improves the quality of mold making and the manufacturing capabilities of complex molds. However, there are still many companies that lack awareness of this and are reluctant to use them, resulting in the inability to adapt to the upgrading of molds and upgrading quality requirements. Therefore, it is imperative to vigorously promote and popularize computer-aided design techniques for plastic molds.