Mold, or mould
A mold ( or a mould ) is a hollow container used to give shape to molten or hot liquid material when it cools and hardens.
With a mold, we produce prototypes with the ability to duplicate or simulating plastic or metal physical properties.Then we proceed with mass production which is also called injection.
Compared to CNC prototype, when your demanded quantity is high enough, you can choose a mold and injection instead of mockups for cost down quite substantially.
Or after several stages of the trial run (EVT, DVT, PVT) by verifying CNC prototypes, your masterpiece will enter into mass production stages then officially launched on the market.
The types are divided into knife one, soft-tooling one and hard-tooling one( steel mould ). Briefly introduce them below.
Knife Mold
Knife mould made for manufacturing flat- and uncomplicated-structured models in a much more economical way.
Soft tooling, or vacuum molding
Soft tooling ( commonly made with silicon ) is also known as vacuum casting. It is used for making low volume but multiple prototypes.
If a lower volume of parts is needed ( 1-20 units ) and you take cost and time into account, the soft-tooling technique is the better choice compared with hard-tooling because of its low cost and the flexibility of the mould.
Hard tooling
If you need mass production ( 10-100,000 units), we suggest you steel mould, so-called hard tooling.
Injection
Injection molding is a manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting molten material into a mould. Injection can be performed with a host of materials. The most commonly thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers are included.
Parts to be injection molded must be very carefully designed to facilitate the molding process; the material used for the part, the desired shape and features of the part, the material of the mould, and the properties of the molding machine must all be taken into account. The versatility of injection molding is facilitated by this breadth of design considerations and possibilities.
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