In recent years, the competition in the mold manufacturing industry worldwide has become increasingly fierce. How to improve the service life of molds and accessories has become a symbol of enterprise competitiveness. The quality of molds will directly affect the quality, output, cost, production cycle of new and old products, the speed of product structure adjustment, and market competitiveness of enterprises. Therefore, the economic situation has put forward increasingly high requirements for the quality of molds.

So how can we make the mold produce high-quality parts for a longer time and more times under high-precision, low-cost, and high-efficiency conditions? This is not a simple topic, it mainly includes the following aspects:

1. Material selection: When selecting materials for molds, in addition to meeting the customer's requirements for product quality, the cost of the materials and their strength within the set cycle should also be considered. 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 are prone to surface fatigue cracks, leading to 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 steel 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 steel with lower affinity with the workpiece to prevent mold sticking from exacerbating wear on the mold parts, thereby affecting the quality of the mold.

2. Design of parts in various parts of the mold: If the mold structure allows, the corners of each surface of the mold accessories 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 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 factors on mold quality caused by the wear and tear of sliding fit parts and frequent impact parts during long-term use. At the same time, it is necessary to reduce the scope of disassembly and assembly required for repairing a certain component, especially when replacing vulnerable parts (such as driver barrels, thimbles, cores, inserts, etc.), it is necessary to minimize the scope of disassembly and assembly as much as possible.

3. The processing methods of precision molds include the use of electric discharge, wire cutting, CNC machining, etc. 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. Try to use high-precision measuring instruments as much as possible. For mold parts with complex surface structures, precision measuring equipment such as coordinate measuring instruments should be used to ensure the accuracy of measurement data.

4. Surface strengthening of main formed components: Surface strengthening of accessories can improve wear resistance, thereby better improving mold quality. Different strengthening methods are used for molds and accessories 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 die and plastic die 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 types of mold steel.. Of course, if the product belongs to trial production or the production batch is relatively small, it is not necessary to undergo surface strengthening treatment for mold steel parts.

Planned protective maintenance of molds and data processing during the maintenance process can prevent potential problems with mold steel during production and improve maintenance efficiency.