Is 3d printing a replacement for traditional mold making?

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The mold is known as the “mother of industry”, and its application can be traced back to ancient times. In the past few decades, with the rolling of the revolutionary wheel of science and technology, the mold manufacturing industry has opened a new chapter, and the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. , made a huge contribution to the processing industry. Nowadays, although the traditional manufacturing industry around the world still uses molds as the main force of production, the development of molds has been impacted by 3D printing technology.

In recent years, with the development of Industry 4.0, the development speed of China's manufacturing industry from "manufacturing" to "intelligence" has become more and more rapid. 3D printing technology has been widely used in China's manufacturing industry. 3D printers can be molds. Design and manufacturing provide efficient, low-cost support. Even with the rapid development of 3D printing technology, in some areas, it has gradually begun to subvert the mold technology and form a direct competitive relationship with it.

It is understood that compared to 3D printing technology, traditional mold manufacturing requires more steps and processes, and the mold production cycle is longer. When a mold manufacturer introduces a new product, the new product will pass stringent international standards and certification before it goes on the market, and the certification of many parts will take a long time. This will put the new product in a very disadvantageous position in the time to seize the market. And 3D printing injection molds are an efficient solution. Well-known manufacturer Schneider Electric did this by using 3D printing technology to make injection molds in their open labs.

According to Schneider related personnel, it usually takes several weeks to two months to produce a mold, and the mold prototype can be completed in a few hours using 3D printing technology, and can be modified immediately according to the test results. The final product sample is then injection molded. Samples of these products can be sent directly for certification, while traditional mold manufacturing may still be in production, and even before the final determination of the mold, the 3D printed product has been certified, greatly shortening the development cycle.

Only in the mold production cycle, 3D printing technology has had a certain impact on the traditional mold manufacturing. However, industry experts say that although 3D printing technology has many advantages such as short production cycle, convenient raw materials, and uniform product pressure, 3D printing technology can not completely replace the traditional mold manufacturing method, because 3D printing technology is still in the manufacturing process. There are some problems.

For example, 3D printing technology is a layer-by-layer processing of the product, which will shorten the production cycle of the mold, but it will also lead to a stepping effect on the surface of the mold. Similar problems exist with directly printed molds, which require machining or sandblasting to eliminate these small, toothed edges. In addition, holes smaller than 1 mm must be drilled, larger holes require reaming or drilling, and thread features require tapping or milling. These secondary treatments greatly reduce the speed advantage of 3D printing dies.

At the same time, in order to ensure good material flow performance, the injection mold needs to be heated to a very high temperature. Aluminum and steel molds typically experience temperatures of 500 F (260 ° C) or higher, especially when processing high temperature plastics such as PEEK and PEI materials. It is easy to produce thousands of parts with metal molds, and it can also be used as a transition mold before the final mass production mold comes out. Mold materials made using 3D printing technology are typically photosensitive or thermosetting resins that are cured by ultraviolet light or laser light. Although these plastic molds are relatively hard, they are destroyed very quickly under the thermal cycling conditions of injection molding. In fact, in a mild environment, 3D printing dies typically fail within 100 uses, high temperature plastics such as polyethylene and or styrene. For glass-filled polycarbonate and high-temperature plastics, only a few parts can be produced.

In addition, a major reason for using 3D printing dies is their low cost. The cost of production-grade machining molds is typically $20,000 or more, which means that the same size as the $1,000 printing mold is comparable. However, this analogy is unfair, and the evaluation of the printing stencil usually only considers material consumption, and does not consider labor, assembly and installation, injection systems and hardware. For example, ProtoLabsd's aluminum mold costs $1,500 for production. If you need to produce more parts, use 3D printing molds, you need to reprint and assemble new molds for every 50-100 products. On the other hand, aluminum molds are usually still in good service after producing 10,000 parts, regardless of the plastic used. Therefore, in terms of production cost, 3D printing is no more cost effective than conventional mold manufacturing methods.

In addition, in the product design, the principle and practice of traditional injection mold manufacturing has more than a century of history, the industry is relatively thorough research, such as draft angle must be greater than or equal to 5 degrees to meet most aluminum mold requirements. 3D printing molds are challenging to mold plastic parts, and extra care is required for the number and mounting position of plastic mold thimbles. 3D printing dies (especially high injection temperatures) are somewhat more flexible in terms of increasing cavity wall thickness and reducing pressure. The design of the gate is also different, tunnels and point gates should be avoided. Direct gates, fan gates, and wing gates should be increased to three times the normal size. The flow direction of the polymer in the print mold should be consistent with the 3D print line to avoid high packing caused by stickiness and low pressure. The cooling system can increase the life of the mold to a certain extent, but it does not significantly reduce the number of cycles of the printing mold, because the heat dissipation capability of the 3D printing mold is not as good as that of the aluminum mold or the steel mold.

In summary, 3D printing technology will not completely replace the traditional mold manufacturing industry. Because 3D printing molds have certain deficiencies compared with traditional mold manufacturing in terms of finished product quality, product cost and mold design. Moreover, 3D printing is not suitable for mass production. The unit price for producing one piece and producing 10,000 pieces is basically close, and the time required for 3D printing is also long. The current 3D printing technology can only produce tight mold production for small batch production cycles, and large-scale production is still based on traditional mold manufacturing.

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