First of all, a basic question, what is the cost of the mold, a friend can answer me without thinking: the mold cost is the mold material fee + processing fee + tax. Of course, there is also a labor fee. We can think that the labor fee is included in the processing fee, and of course the design fee.
First, the rational design of the product
I believe that many people will not agree with me. Whether the design of the product is reasonable or not, how could it be the biggest factor affecting the cost of the mold.
Let's take a look. The first foot, I kicked the ball to our OEM. But if you think about it, if the product design is unreasonable, it is a disaster for the mold company. It is a disaster. I have been working on molds for more than 40 years. This kind of experience has been much more experienced. Sometimes, in order to achieve an undercut on the product, the product engineer and the mold designer do not communicate well, and the cost of the mold will increase exponentially.
I was fortunate to be involved in the design of a car interior for a disabled person in a Shanghai auto company. One of the parts is called the middle partition. According to the original design, this part is very large, and the production cost of the mold is about 4 million RMB. The matching injection molding machine is over 4,000 tons. Later I suggested splitting it into 2 pieces. The production cost of the two sets of molds did not add up to more than 2 million. The matching injection molding machines are all 1,500 tons. Finally, all are happy.
There are too many such examples. Therefore, a product designer should try to understand the knowledge of the mold as much as possible, so that the designed product is as suitable as possible for the mold engineering, and do not increase the difficulty and cost of the mold.
Under the premise of meeting the assembly of the vehicle, maintaining good communication with the mold department is the most effective and direct measure to reduce the cost of the mold. There is also a philosophical question of productivity and production relations. Some product engineers believe that the cost of mold is a matter for your mold company and has nothing to do with me. However, if the production relationship is recombined, the injection molding company and the mold company are one, what will happen?
In fact, this is a social trend. The companies that are now operating better are the combination of injection molding companies and mold companies. Companies that exist solely on the basis of mold making can hardly survive. Therefore, if the product design is not reasonable, it will directly increase the cost of the mold.
Second, the product design changes
Mold companies often encounter such a situation. In a certain project, the mold has just been designed, the mold frame has just been ordered back, and the customer's change notice will come. If it is a small change, it will not affect the overall structure of the mold. It doesn't matter, sometimes it's more serious, because the shape of the product changes, the mechanism needs to be added to the mold, and even the mold base must be reordered. This cost has increased.
So try to minimize design changes. There are a lot of rapid prototyping methods. Before the mold is made, the 3D will be used to make the whole vehicle assembly, and the 3D of the product can be corrected in time to minimize the cost increase caused by the product design change.
Third, the mold design is perfect
Here are two situations to analyze:
1 Rationality and processability of mold design
In general mold companies, there must be old and experienced designers in the design team, as well as young engineers who have just come out of school. We can't ask young engineers to design high-level molds independently when they first come to the company. Experienced mold engineers, if the mold structure produced by closed doors, can not be perfect, there will be some details that are not well thought out.
One of the most important and effective methods is the collective review. There are now many simulation methods, such as mold flow analysis, mold structure dynamic analysis, trial products and design 3D comparison analysis, which can minimize the cost increase caused by the irrational mold design.
2 design waste
If the mold user knows that as long as the mold produces 500 samples, it is used to develop the market, but if we design according to the mold with a life of 300,000 molds, this cost will be large, which is a waste of design.