Introduction
Molds are a mainstream and conventional manufacturing technology for the industry. Rapid molds, as the name implies, are molds that take a short time to produce, more than 1.5 times faster than conventional mold production. They are all molds, so why are rapid molds so fast? Gaofeng Prototyping has all the experience in manufacturing various rapid molds. While meeting product requirements, we simplify the mold processing and manufacturing process. For example, our rapid molds have mold frames of different sizes in stock, so that the mold frames can be shared, and there will be no duplication of production and processing work, and only fine-tuning is required.
Our rapid molds rarely use automatic inserts and sliders, and are basically operated manually. Rapid mold customers do not have high requirements for mass production. When the output is not high, it will be better to replace intelligent automation with manual labor. Of course, rapid molds have more quick tricks and details during manufacturing, and there will be more detailed process decomposition for customer drawings.
What Is Rapid Tooling (RT)
The scope of molds is wide and involves a wide range of industries. Molds can be called the mother of industrial manufacturing. It can even be said that there would be no new products without molds. Today we will talk about the rapid steel mold within the mold range, also known as the soft mold.
Rapid steel mold itself is not the mainstream in industrial manufacturing process. Many manufacturing professionals are not very clear about what rapid mold is and its purpose. The industry calls it differently, such as rapid mold, rapid soft mold, rapid steel mold, rapid aluminum mold, etc. Although they are called differently, the requirements are similar, that is, “fast”.
Advantages of rapid aluminum mold:
- Aluminum mold shape is easy to modify (aluminum has good plasticity and processing properties)
- Fast processing time (aluminum processing is fast)
- Aluminum materials are available for ordering (order today and it will arrive for processing tomorrow)
- The mold can be textured and polished
Disadvantages of rapid aluminum molds:
- The mold life is between 1K-1W
- Mold injection production is not subject to pressure
What role does rapid prototyping play?
Rapid molds are generally used in the R&D trial production stage, and are also used in the production of various products with low output. Rapid molds are sometimes also called test molds. Before mass production of products, a set of rapid molds are made for experiments and engineering structure verification before the formal mold is produced. Rapid molds have low costs, short production time, and can promptly discover its irrationality before the formal mold is produced, allowing engineering R&D personnel to intuitively see the problems on the rapid mold, and then modify the mold product drawings to extend the service life of the formal mold.
What kind of products are suitable for rapid molds?
Plastic parts with production batches of less than 5,000 are very suitable for rapid tooling. The mold cost is low, the production time is short, and the change is fast. The speed of product appearance change in the new era is unimaginable. For example, some products such as mobile phones and automobiles are put on the shelves not long after consumers buy them. In the era of rapid changes in consumer categories, rapid tooling plays a big role.
