At present, the industrial production is faced with the challenges of multiple product varieties, rapid updating and fierce market competition.in order to reduce the cost and improve the competitiveness of the enterprise, the main engine factory has put forward new requirements for the innovation of mould manufacturing technology and the transformation of machine tools and tools. Hot runner mould industry directly serves for the industrialization of high and new technology.at present, the industrial production is faced with the challenges of many product varieties, fast updating and fierce market competition.in order to reduce the cost and improve the competitiveness of the enterprise, the main engine factory has put forward new requirements for the innovation of mould manufacturing technology and the transformation of machine tools and tools.

Hot runner mold

Mould industry directly for the high and new technology industrialization service, its own and a large number of high and new technology. Obviously, the mould industry has become an important part of the high-tech industry. Shenzhen mold technology association deputy secretary general luo baihui said, the level of measuring mold products, mainly based on its manufacturing accuracy, surface roughness, complexity, service life and manufacturing cycle. Although at present, China's machine tool industry has been able to provide complete sets of high-precision processing equipment, but in the processing and positioning accuracy, processing surface roughness, machine rigidity, stability, reliability, tool and accessories matching and precision maintenance, and other aspects, compared with foreign countries still have a certain gap.

The development trend of mould manufacturing technology

China's industrial production is faced with the challenges of multiple product categories, rapid update and fierce market competition. Mold manufacturing must meet the requirements of short delivery time, high precision, good quality and low price. Luo baihui, deputy secretary-general of shenzhen mold technology association, thinks that the current development trend of mold technology in China is mainly reflected in the following aspects.
1. Universal application of mold CAD/CAM/CAE technology
Due to the development of mold CAD/CAM technology as a mature common technology, the price of hardware and software of this technology has been reduced to a level generally acceptable to small and medium-sized enterprises in recent years. Qualified enterprises should actively do a good job in deepening the application of this technology, that is, to carry out enterprise information engineering, from CAPP→PDM→CIMS→VR, gradually deepen and improve.
2. Rapid prototyping and related technologies have been better developed
Rapid prototyping manufacturing (RPM) technology is a high-tech technology integrating precision machinery manufacturing, computer, NC technology, laser forming technology and material science. The technology can be directly or indirectly used in mold manufacturing, from the conceptual design of the mold to the completion of the manufacturing, only for the traditional processing methods required by one-third of the time and cost of about a quarter. Therefore, the combination of rapid prototyping technology and rapid prototyping technology will be the further development direction of traditional rapid prototyping technology.
3. High-speed milling is more widely used
Compared with traditional machining, high speed milling also has the advantages of low temperature rise and small thermal deformation. At present, it has been developing towards higher agility, intelligence and integration. The use of high speed milling can shorten the die manufacturing cycle and reduce the cost.
4. Mould high-speed scanning technology plays an increasingly significant role
The high speed scanning and digitizing system of mould plays an important role in reverse engineering. The high speed scanner and the mould sweeping system have been applied in more than 200 mould factories in China. The system provides many functions from the model or physical scanning to the processing of the desired model, which greatly reduces the development and manufacturing cycle of the mold. Some fast scanning systems can be quickly installed in the existing CNC milling machines and machining centers. The high speed scanner can scan up to 3m/min.
5. Edm milling technology will become a development trend
Edm milling technology, also known as electric spark into machining technology, this is an alternative to traditional with formed electrode processing cavity of new technology, it adopts high speed rotating simple tubular electrodes for 3 d or 2 d contour machining (like numerical control milling), so no longer need to make complex forming panel, it's clearly a significant development in the field of electric spark forming processing. It is expected that this technology will be further developed.
6. The application prospects of superfinishing and composite machining are promising
With the development of precision and large scale, super finishing technology with machining precision more than 1 micron will be of great use.
7. Hot runner technology began to be popularized
Due to the use of hot runner technology mold can improve the productivity and quality of parts, and can greatly save the raw materials and save energy, so the wide application of this technology is a big change in plastic mold. Foreign hot runner technology is developing fast, half of the plastic mold has used hot runner technology, some factories have reached more than 80%, the effect is very obvious. Domestic in recent years has begun to promote the application, but the overall is less than 10%, individual enterprises have reached about 30%. The key to the development of hot runner technology is to establish the national standard of hot runner components and actively produce cheap and high quality components.
8. Further development of gas-assisted injection technology and high-pressure injection molding
Gas assisted injection molding is a new plastic forming process, which has the advantages of low injection pressure, small warping deformation of products, good surface quality and easy to form products with different wall thickness, etc., which can greatly reduce the cost on the premise of ensuring product quality. Foreign countries have been relatively mature, the domestic industry in the automobile and household appliances are gradually promoting the use.
Including gas assisted injection molding plastic melt (generally adopt nitrogen) injection and gas injection forming two parts, ordinary injection process more than the traditional process parameters need to determine and control, and the gas assisted injection is often used in more complex large products, mold design and control is difficult, therefore, development of gas assisted forming flow analysis software, appear very important. In order to ensure the precision of plastic parts, we will continue to research and develop the high-pressure injection molding process and mold as well as the injection compression molding process and mold.
9. Further development and application of die hydroforming technology
Hydraulic forming technology is a kind of technological means adopted by mold expansion technology, which has been widely used in belt pulley and similar products in the past. This method simplifies the die structure and reduces the number of parts, overcomes the serious thinning of materials in the conventional forming process, and greatly reduces the production cost while improving the product quality. However, due to the limitation of forming technology, it is not suitable for some components which change greatly along the longitudinal section. In addition, the introduction of the forming medium (high pressure oil) to the plate or pipe fitting has not been well solved. Therefore, the process needs to be further developed to be applied in more fields.
10. The degree of mold standardization is continuously improved
Our country mold standard degree is increasing unceasingly, estimated at present mold standard parts use coverage rate has reached about 35% (foreign developed countries generally about 80%). The standardization of molds must be further strengthened, and the improvement of the standardization of molds will be beneficial to the production and sales of standard parts of molds.
11. High quality materials and advanced surface treatment technology are valued
In the whole mold price composition, the material proportion is not big, generally between 10% and 30%. Therefore, it is very necessary to choose high quality steel and apply the corresponding surface treatment technology to improve the life of the mold.
12. Mold grinding and polishing is developing towards automation and intelligence
The surface finishing of die is one of the difficult problems in die processing. The quality of die surface has great influence on the service life of die and the appearance quality of parts. Therefore, the study of polishing automation, intelligent is an important development trend. In addition, because of the complex shape of mold cavity, any grinding and polishing method has some limitations. Attention should be paid to the development of special grinding and polishing methods, such as extrusion grinding, electrochemical polishing, ultrasonic polishing, and composite polishing processes and equipment, to improve the surface quality of the die. 13. Development and development of mold automatic processing system
With the rapid development of all kinds of new technologies, automatic mould processing systems have appeared abroad. This is also the goal of China's long-term development. Mold automatic processing system should have the following characteristics: a reasonable combination of multiple machine tools; Equipped with accompanying positioning fixture or positioning disc; Have a complete machine tools, tool CNC library; A complete CNC flexible synchronization system; Quality monitoring and control system.
Micro milling technology will be the future of high speed milling
Micro-systems, micro-molds and micro-milling are novel and exciting technologies for mass production of micro-components. Micro milling (Micro - milling) using a very small cutting tools (less than 0.1 mm in diameter), and can get very small surface precision, tolerance and high quality surface general-purpose NC software can't meet the precision, so manufacturers have to face huge challenges: parts deformation, complexity increases, the characteristics of small workpieces must with extremely high precision, and the use of micron grade special cutting tools. Micro milling is the future of high speed milling, micro precision mold companies will have a stronger competitiveness.

Virtual technology

Virtual technology has been developed
Developments in computers and networks are making virtual technology possible. Virtual technology can form virtual space environment, realize virtual cooperative design, manufacture, research and development, and even establish virtual enterprise.
6. Automobile body mold manufacturing technology promotes the overall level of the industry
With the development of lightweight, high-speed, comfortable and stylized automobiles, automobile body molds should adapt to new automobile body manufacturing materials (such as aluminum alloy, plastic, etc.), and develop towards large, complex and high-precision directions. In order to better combine with the body production, mold production department in addition to mold design and manufacturing, but also must do well in the development, coordination of body design, model car manufacturing, process design and other links, mold enterprise overall quality and comprehensive level has been improved. Tooling transformation equipment high efficiency and quality mold
Mould has a unique and important position in the research and development, innovation and production of manufacturing products, making the mould manufacturing ability and level become an important symbol of national innovation ability. Whether the mould manufacturing equipment is good or not is directly related to the level of mould technology. The development of die and die equipment industry promotes the progress of die and die industry. Luo baihui pointed out that with the more refined mold manufacturing, with the high-speed, composite, intelligent, environmental protection and other mainstream of the current world machine tool manufacturing trend, mold manufacturing equipment, technology put forward higher requirements. CNC machine tools are required to meet the requirements of high speed, high dynamic accuracy, high rigidity, thermal stability, high reliability, networking and supporting control systems have personalized characteristics, all kinds of advanced software for the overall operation of machine tools to achieve openness, compatibility.
At present, machine tool manufacturing enterprises have carried out corresponding tooling transformation around the following aspects to meet the development requirements of precision and automation trend of molds.
1. Upsizing of machine tools
Molding parts of increasingly large and parts of the high productivity requirements more than a mold cavity, the increasingly large mould, large-tonnage big mould can reach 100 tons, a die hundreds, thousands of cavity, the cavity mould processing equipment with large workbench, at the same time increase the Y Z axis stroke, with large bearing, high rigidity, high consistency.
2. High rigidity of machine tool
Die processing die steel material hardness, in order to ensure the machining accuracy and surface quality of parts, high-speed machine tools used for mold manufacturing must have high dynamic and static stiffness, in order to improve the positioning accuracy, tracking accuracy and vibration resistance of the machine tools.
3. Highlight the composite processing performance
For complex cavity and multifunctional composite mould, as parts of complicated shape, must improve the level of mould design and manufacture of a variety of groove, a variety of material in a mold forming or assemble components of multifunctional composite mould, requires large amount of processing programming procedures, have Gao Shenkong cavity comprehensive cutting capacity and high stability, improve the processing difficulty.
In order to achieve high precision, high speed and high stability machining of 3D curved surface, multi-axis linkage, with good comprehensive cutting ability of deep hole cavity, the machine adopts five-axis linkage machining center. Besides the linear motion of three coordinates, there are also two rotation coordinates of feed motion. The milling head or table can carry on continuous rotary feed with multi-axis linkage, which is suitable for machining the die parts with complex cavity surface.
Composite machining is one of the development directions of die machining. While machining center has many compound machining process can be implemented on a machine tool, but it is still not completely adapt to mould processing, mechanical processing and electrical, chemical, ultrasonic principle of different processing methods, such as composite, with two or more process characteristics of the composite processing in the future will have broad application prospects of mould manufacturing.
4. High speed milling capability
The fineness of die processing makes high speed and high power high speed machining become the development direction. High speed milling has shown great superiority in die processing. Cavity and mold parts and other parts of the rough, finishing is often completed in a workpiece clamping, so the spindle power is large, medium size mold milling machine and machining center spindle power is often 10~40kW, some even higher. High speed milling has many advantages, such as high hard materials, smooth processing, small cutting force, small workpiece deformation, and so on.
5. High dynamic accuracy, safe and environmental protection
High dynamic accuracy. The high rigidity, thermal stability, high reliability, high dynamic precision and high quality control system of the machine tool can realize the high precision machining of 3d curved surface.
The combination of processing technology and green product technology will be taken into account when companies purchase equipment. The radiation and medium selection of electrical processing machine tools will be the factors of safety and environmental protection, and the edm milling technology will be developed in the mold processing field in the future.