For a qualified mold designer, how to start a mold design correctly is very important, I think I can share some of my experience：

1 Predesign Requirements

Before starting a mould design, the designer should be in possession of the following information (some items of which have been mentioned previously).

An unambiguous fully detailed component drawing

Specifications of the moulding material including grade and colour

The moulding machine specifications

All the estimating details including any sketches

Tool specifications as follows:

Number of impressions

Type of mould e.g., two-plate, three-plate, split, side core, hot runner, etc.

Type of runner system

Type of gate

Method of de-gating

Use of robotics

Estimated cycle time

2 Golden Rules

  1. Never start a mould design without all the necessary information.
  2. If an established design works well, don’t embark on a totally new design if you can base your design on the established one.
  3. The simpler the design the more reliable and efficient it will be.
  4. Always sketch two or three alternative approaches to the design before committing yourself to the first one you think of.
  5. Draw a sufficient number of views so that the design can be understood fully.

3 Step-by-Step Design

It is very difficult to explain in words alone how a mould is designed; we will therefore follow through a step-by-step design of a typical mould tool from start to finish which illustrates the procedure. In order to do this, we will consider a moulding that has to be produced on an eight-impression basis.