In modern plastic product manufacturing, there often exists a need to produce multiple plastic components that either fit together or form a complete set. The traditional approach involves developing a separate mold for each individual part. However, this method comes with high costs, low efficiency, and challenges in maintaining precision fit between components. The innovative solution to this problem is the plastic part family mold.
A Family Mold is a type of injection mold structure that incorporates cavities for multiple different parts within a single mold base. This mold can produce several distinct, yet usually interrelated, plastic parts in a single injection cycle – parts that often belong to different components of the same product system.
Compared to creating individual molds for each part, family molds offer significant economic benefits and production efficiency advantages:
- Reduces Mold Manufacturing Cost: Decreases the number of molds required, as one set replaces multiple sets.
- Improves Production Efficiency: Completes multiple parts simultaneously in one injection cycle.
- Simplifies Production Management: Reduces tasks related to mold storage, setup, and debugging.
- Ensures Part Consistency: All parts are formed under the same process conditions, ensuring uniform color and shrinkage rate.
Family molds are not suitable for all situations. Suitable part combinations should meet the following conditions:
- Parts use the same plastic material.
- Parts have relatively balanced weight and projected area.
- Parts have similar wall thickness and cooling requirements.
- Parts have the same production volume and delivery schedule requirements.
In terms of cavity layout, the principle of flow balance should be followed to ensure the melt fills all cavities simultaneously. This requires adjusting flow resistance and compensating for size differences between parts through precise runner design.