Three dimensional-based mold design solutions are being used for the development of injection molds, allowing mold tooling companies to shorten their development times and automate mold manufacturing. […]
Stress relieving is an intermediate heat treatment procedure to reduce induced residual stresses as a result of machining, fabrication and welding. The application of heat to the steel during its machining or fabrication will assist in removing residual stresses that will, unless addressed during the manufacturing by stress relieving, manifest themselves at the final heat [...]
Normalizing is a process that makes the grain size normal. This process is usually carried out after forging, extrusion, drawing or heavy bending operations. […]
Annealing is the process of heating the steel to a particular temperature in the austenite region and cooling down the steel very slowly. There are many derivatives of the annealing process, but generally the process is a slow cool process. […]
If we consider the primary metal of steel, which is iron, there are a number of features that we can observe immediately about the metal: […]
Heat treatment – as applied to steel – can be defined as the application of heat to change a characteristic or condition of the steel. […]
Polishing, the final step in the mold building process, is highly dependent on the experience and technique of the polisher. However, if the material is not a “mold quality steel,” it may be virtually impossible to bring it up to the required finish. […]
Although these nine issues may be addressed individually, looking at all of them together is often more effective. Many companies are turning to a centralized and automated data exchange center (DEX Center), which address physical translation, security, system requirements, transmission and data management issues to establishing effective data integration. […]
This is the first – and often the only – area considered by most companies. Current CAD capabilities provide robust data exchange, including standards-based methodologies such as IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) and STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data), as well as direct translators. […]
Moldmakers in today’s competitive environment are called upon many times to be more than skilled professionals at building quality tooling for a customer. Because they are asked at times to be a plastics expert (“What shrink should we use?”), process technician (“What mold temperatures do we need to run and how fast?”) and automation inventor [...]