In recent years, the competition in the manufacturing industry worldwide has become increasingly fierce. The ability of enterprises to provide personalized and high-quality products to customers with high efficiency and low consumption in the shortest possible time has become a symbol of their competitiveness. Molds are known as the father of industry, and the quality of molds directly affects the quality, output, cost, cycle of new product production and old product replacement, speed of enterprise product structure adjustment, and market competitiveness. Therefore, the economic situation has put forward increasingly high requirements for the quality of molds. So how can we more reasonably improve the quality of molds? That is to say, how can molds produce high-quality parts for a longer period of time and more molds under high-precision, low-cost, and high-efficiency conditions? This has increasingly become the focus of people's attention. Mold quality is not a simple topic, it includes the following aspects:

(1) Product quality: stability and compliance of product dimensions, surface smoothness of products, utilization rate of product materials, etc;

⑵ Service life: The number of work cycles that the mold can complete or the number of parts produced while ensuring product quality;

⑶ Use and maintenance of molds: whether it is the most convenient to use, easy to demould, and the shortest possible production assistance time;

Maintenance cost, maintenance periodicity, etc.

Basic ways to improve mold quality:

Firstly, the design of the workpiece should be reasonable, and the best structural scheme should be selected as much as possible. The designer of the workpiece should consider the technical requirements and structure of the workpiece, which must comply with the process and feasibility of mold manufacturing.

The design of the mold is the most important step to improve the quality of the mold, and many factors need to be considered, including the selection of mold materials, the usability and safety of the mold structure, the machinability of mold parts, and the convenience of mold maintenance. These should be considered as comprehensively as possible at the beginning of the design.

① The selection of mold materials should not only meet the customer's requirements for product quality, but also take into account the cost of the materials and their strength within the set cycle. Of course, the selection of materials should also be based on factors such as the type of mold, working method, processing speed, and main failure modes. For example, the main failure form of punching dies is blade wear, so it is necessary to choose materials with high surface hardness and good wear resistance; Stamping dies mainly bear periodic loads, which can easily cause surface fatigue cracks and cause surface peeling. Therefore, it is necessary to choose materials with good surface toughness; The drawing die should be made of materials with particularly low friction coefficients; Due to cyclic thermal stress, die-casting molds should be made of materials with strong thermal fatigue; For injection molds, when the plastic parts are made of materials such as ABS, PP, PC, etc., pre hardened and tempered steel can be selected as the mold material. When the plastic parts are made of high gloss and transparent materials, corrosion-resistant stainless steel can be selected. When the products are in large quantities, quenched and tempered steel can be selected. In addition, it is also necessary to consider using mold materials with lower affinity with the parts to prevent mold sticking from exacerbating the wear of mold parts, thereby affecting the quality of the mold.

② When designing the mold structure, try to be compact and easy to operate, while also ensuring that the mold parts have sufficient strength and stiffness; When the mold structure allows, the corners of each surface of the mold parts should be designed as rounded transitions as much as possible to avoid stress concentration; For concave molds, cavities, and some convex molds and cores, combination or splicing structures can be used to eliminate stress concentration. For slender convex molds or cores, appropriate protective measures need to be taken in the structure; For cold stamping dies, devices (such as spring pins, compressed air, etc.) should be installed to prevent blockage of parts or waste materials. At the same time, it is also necessary to consider how to reduce the impact on mold quality caused by the wear and tear of sliding fit parts and frequent impact parts during long-term use.

③ In the design, it is necessary to reduce the scope of disassembly and assembly required for repairing a certain component, especially when replacing vulnerable parts, to minimize the scope of disassembly and assembly as much as possible.

The manufacturing process of molds is also an important part of ensuring the quality of molds, and the processing methods and accuracy during the mold manufacturing process can also affect the service life of molds. The accuracy of each component directly affects the overall assembly of the mold. In addition to the influence of the equipment's own accuracy, it is necessary to improve the processing methods of the parts and improve the technical level of the fitter in the mold grinding process to improve the processing accuracy of the mold parts; If the overall assembly effect of the mold does not meet the requirements, it will increase the probability of the mold operating abnormally during the trial mold, which will have a significant impact on the overall quality of the mold. Therefore, in order to ensure that the mold has good original accuracy - original mold quality, it is necessary to first choose high-precision machining methods such as electric discharge, wire cutting, CNC machining, etc. during the manufacturing process. At the same time, attention should be paid to the accuracy inspection of the mold, including the machining accuracy and assembly accuracy of the mold parts, as well as the comprehensive inspection of the mold accuracy through trial mold acceptance work. During the inspection, high-precision measuring instruments should also be selected as much as possible, For mold parts with complex surface structures, precise measurement data cannot be achieved using ordinary rulers or vernier cards. Therefore, precision measurement equipment such as coordinate measuring instruments need to be selected to ensure the accuracy of measurement data.

(4) Strengthen the surface of the main forming parts of the mold to improve the surface wear resistance of the mold parts, thereby better improving the quality of the mold. For surface strengthening, different strengthening methods should be selected based on the molds used for different purposes. For example, the punching die can be strengthened by electric discharge, hard alloy surfacing, etc. to improve the wear resistance and compressive strength of the surface layer of the mold parts; Nitriding (hard nitriding) treatment can be adopted for hot working die steel parts such as die-casting molds and plastic molds to improve the wear resistance, heat fatigue resistance and corrosion resistance of parts; Deep drawing and bending molds can be treated with sulfurization to reduce friction coefficient and improve material wear resistance; Carbonitriding (soft nitriding) can be applied to the surface strengthening treatment of various molds. In addition, a technology developed in recent years called FCVA vacuum diamond coating technology can form a protective film on the surface of parts that is exceptionally strong and smooth, uniform and dense with the substrate. This technology is particularly suitable for surface protective treatment of molds and is also a significant method to improve mold quality. Of course, if the product belongs to trial production or the production batch is relatively small, surface strengthening treatment of mold parts is not necessarily necessary.

The correct use and maintenance of molds are also a major factor in improving the quality of molds. For example, the installation and debugging method of the mold should be appropriate. In the case of a hot runner, the power wiring should be correct, the cooling water path should meet the design requirements, and the parameters of the injection molding machine, die-casting machine, and press machine in production should comply with the design requirements. When using the mold correctly, regular maintenance and upkeep should also be carried out on the mold. The guide pillars, guide sleeves, and other parts with relative motion of the mold should be regularly lubricated. For forging molds, plastic molds, die-casting molds, and other molds, lubricants or mold release agents should be sprayed on the surface of the formed parts before each mold is formed. Planned protective maintenance of molds and data processing during the maintenance process can prevent potential problems in production and improve maintenance efficiency.

In short, in order to improve the quality of molds, it is necessary to first consider the impact of each link on mold quality, and secondly, it is necessary to cooperate with all departments. The quality of molds is a true reflection of the strength of mold enterprises themselves.