DESIGN : Our CAD/CAM office is made up of six people.
Aluminum molds are underused for the injection of serial parts...
Depending on the quantities to be produced, it is not always relevant to think of “mechanized steel mold”. The “overall cost” equation (cost mold + parts) can turn to the advantage of the serial aluminum mold.
This “temple” represents a method developed by Protoform to ensure short lead times and meet the 400,000 warranty conditions.
How to guarantee 400,000 parts in series aluminum molds?
The holding in time of a series aluminium mold will be the result of a collaboration between Protoform, responsible for the tooling and you, our customer, in charge of the definition of the part to ensure its functions.
Each function of the part corresponds to a design expectation and potentially constraints on the mold, to « design for quality »
Designing for quality means analyzing the part to reduce the risk of quality, cost or delay, starting with a functional review and rheology.
You have to think in detail about the “transformation” of part functions into design expectations / constraints.
We have learned from experience (and let us not hesitate to say that we continue to learn).
Protoform runs 42 aluminum molds, some since 2008.
Finally, our workshop mainly deals with aluminum injection molds. From this we have deduced "golden rules" of injection for the durability of molds over time, what we call « appropriate injection technics » Steel mold injection rules may be inappropriate.