In 2005 to 18 million tons or so, the ball ink casting in the proportion of the total output to 20% -25%, or 3.2 million -400 million tons; with the an increase in car production, non-ferrous castings output at close to 2 million tons; in the future demand for the international market will maintain rapid growth, the global annual demand for castings in China about 4000 million tons, of which demand for ductile iron and non-ferrous alloy castings grew rapidly, casting mold will be more than 10 billion yuan output value.
First, businesses are more at home and abroad casting mold
National casting mold manufacturers can be roughly divided into the following categories: The first category of professional die casting factory, these enterprises advanced equipment, technology, quality is the main cast dies; second category is the professional factory mold casting workshop; third class is rapidly developing in recent years, private and private mold factory, such enterprises is small, a large number, each division of labor, coordinated operations, located in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Guangdong area, and some plants already have a certain strength; fourth category is also offering a number of other die casting mold factory.
In short, the casting mold manufacturing enterprises was diversified, and to a high level of development, which is also China's economic development has brought the inevitable trend.
Mold factory in developed countries can be divided into separate mold factory and attached to some of the large group of the mold factory, the general scale is not large, but highly specialized, high level of technology, production and extremely efficient.
Foreign companies generally do not die more than 100 people, mostly in 50 people.
In personnel structure, design, quality control, marketing staff more than 30% of managers in less than 5%. Annual per capita GDP more than 1 million yuan, the maximum can reach more than 200 million yuan. Some private enterprises in the domestic mold, joint ventures and foreign personnel structure similar, but some state-owned enterprises of the personnel structure is not quite rational, in the year still a big gap in per capita output value, mostly in 10 to 20 million yuan, a small number can reach 400,000 yuan.
Foreign die businesses require a higher quality of personnel, technical staff multi-skill, generally can be completed independently from the process to the tooling design; operators with a variety of operational skills; marketing staff to understand and master mold deep. Division of domestic mold smaller enterprises, the lack of a comprehensive high-quality personnel.
Foreign die Enterprise CAD / CAM / CAE technology applications are rather broad, reverse engineering, rapid prototyping foundry molds use was also more common. A number of key enterprises in the domestic mold manufacturers in this area and abroad, the gap is limited, and some have reached the foreign level, but some small and medium enterprises and foreign countries die gap remains large. However, in the mold material, with the introduction of foreign technology, and China's own R & D capabilities, the gap is gradually narrowing.
In the mold of the price and production cycle, foreign internal mold mold price is generally 5 to 10 times, manufacturing cycle is 2 to 3 times, it should be said in these two aspects of domestic mold business or have a certain competitive advantage.
2, casting mold design and manufacturing technology
Although China is casting a big country, but far from casting powers, China casting process level, casting quality, technical and economic indicators, there is a great gap compared with developed countries. Casting Process Sand Casting-based approach to them by hand, still form a large proportion of semi-mechanized, but the die-casting industry developed rapidly in recent years, China maintained its annual 7% to 10% growth rate. China's auto industry is also growing, in order to reduce vehicle weight, cars, aluminum, magnesium light metal consumption will further increase, which made for die-casting a higher quality requirements. China casting process and equipment with the advanced countries still lags far behind. The 20th century, 90 years ago, casting mold design using the computer very little, manufacturing also mainly dominated by ordinary universal device.
Into the 90's, a huge market demand, particularly in the automotive and motorcycle industry, the rapid development of China has greatly advanced the casting mold industry. Meanwhile, along with the involvement of joint ventures and wholly-owned enterprises and foreign advanced mold equipment and the introduction of manufacturing technology, prompting Chinese-made casting mold design and manufacturing skills gradually improve, some companies already have the design and manufacture of large capacity of precision molds, such as FAW Foundry Co., Casting mold factory design and manufacturing company a set of 3400t die-casting mold die-casting machine, with a total weight of 33.5t, is currently the largest Chinese-made die-casting mold.
Since the 20th century, 90 years, casting mold industry in the design and manufacture of the main changes are:
(1) Mold Enterprises raise the level of production technology, high-tech in mold design and manufacturing applications, rapid manufacturing has become a strong guarantee of quality molds. CAD / CAM / CAE applications, showing the use of information technology promote and enhance the superiority of mold industry, CAD / CAM / CAE mold has become a widely used enterprise technologies. CAD / CAM integration technology has been widely used in foundry and die industry, the current two-dimensional design software for use mainly AutoCAD, three-dimensional design software for use are more main Pro / E, UG, Cimatron and so on.
Present FAW Foundry Mold Factory 3D design has reached more than 95% in three-dimensional designs using three-dimensional virtual assembly interference detection technology to inspect the assembly to ensure that the mold design quality, to ensure that the design and process is reasonable. CAM software, 3D data are edited, NC code directly transferred to the CNC machine on the mold. CNC machine tool widely used to ensure that the mold parts machining accuracy and quality greatly improved accuracy of the mold and productivity. CAE technology has gradually applied to the actual design, production, use of CAE technology, simulation of metal filling process, analyze the cooling process to predict the forming process defects may occur, as well as product development, the pre-solidification simulation, greatly optimized process design, reduced test time. FAW Foundry Co., Ltd. Foundry mold factory in a number of large and complex molds, such as the engine cylinder block, cylinder head, gearbox shell mold design application of CAE technology has begun to flow field, temperature field simulation analysis, process yield greatly upgrowing .
(2) milling is an important means of cavity mold. High-speed machining (HighSpeedMachining, referred to as HSM) is a high cutting speed, high feed rate and high processing quality as the main feature of the processing technology, with the workpiece temperature is low, cutting force is small, smooth processing, processing quality, processing efficiency ( for general milling 5 ~ 10 times), and can process hard materials (up to 60HRC) and many other advantages, and therefore in the mold processing received increasing attention. High-speed machining technology into mold industry, improve the mold precision, greatly reducing the time for mold manufacturing. Studies have shown that in general the complexity of the mold, HSM machining time can be reduced by 30% or more.
At present, the mold enterprise in order to shorten the molding cycle times, improve market competitiveness and high-speed machining technology, more and more. HSM in general is mainly used for large and medium-sized mold processing, such as auto panel dies, die casting mold, large plastic mold and other surface processing, and its surface machining precision can reach 0.01mm. Used in the production of high-speed CNC milling technology, can significantly shorten the molding time. The high-speed milling, after finishing the mold face and can use only a slightly polished, saving a lot of grinding, polishing time.
Increase in high-speed CNC milling machine is the mold one of the key business investment in equipment.
(3) EDM mold in the casting process is an indispensable method. EDM for the quenching of the deep, small-scale processing of the cavity is still effective programs. Japan Sodick's linear motor servo drive CNC EDM machine is capable of driving quick reactions, transmission and high positioning accuracy and advantages, such as heat distortion. Xiamier the company's EDM has the P-E3 adaptive control system, PCE energy control systems and automatic programming expert systems, in the casting mold has its irreplaceable role.
(4) precision, complex, large-scale mold development, testing equipment have become increasingly demanding. Now the accuracy of precision molds has reached 2 ~ 3m, precision casting mold has reached 10 ~ 20m. The current domestic manufacturers of testing equipment are used frequently in Italy, the United States and Germany, with a digital scanning coordinate measuring machines. Such as the FAW Foundry Co., Ltd. Die Casting Equipment Factory has a German production of 1600mm 1200mm coordinate measuring machine, with a digital scanning, can be achieved from the measurement of in-kind to the establishment of mathematical models, the output NC code, and ultimately the whole process of mold manufacturing and successfully Reverse engineering techniques to achieve mold manufacturing in the development and application. Equipment in this regard include: Renishaw's high-speed scanner (CYCLONSERIES2), the scanner can be realized-contact laser measuring head and probe complementary advantages, laser scanning accuracy of 0.05mm, contact probe scanning accuracy of 0.02mm. The use of reverse engineering, mold making, with short production cycles, high precision and consistency is good and low price many advantages.
(5) rapid prototyping and manufacturing casting mold has entered the practical stage, LOM, SLS methods such as application of reliability and technical indicators has reached the level of similar foreign products.
(6) Mold blank rapid manufacturing technology. There are dry sand-EPC, EPC-type casting, resin sand casting technologies such as real-type.
(7) User demand for the delivery time has become shorter mold, mold the price getting lower and lower. In order to ensure on time delivery, effective management and cost control has become a mold enterprise survival and development of the main factors. The use of advanced management information system to achieve integrated management, for mold enterprises, especially large-scale mold enterprise, has been a task to be resolved. Such as the FAW Foundry Mold Factory is basically realized the computer network management, from production planning, process development, to quality inspection, inventory, statistics, accounting and so on, in general to a computer management system, factory of various departments can share information through computer networks.
The use of information technology and other high technology to transform the traditional business mold production has become a necessity.
Third, casting mold materials
Casting Mold materials can be used wood, respectively, machinable plastics, aluminum, cast iron, steel and so on.
Wood-mode is still widely used in hand-shape or a single-piece and small batch production, but with the environmental requirements and poor performance of wood processing constraints, will be replaced by real-type casting. Mold Casting with foam plastic sheet as the material, cut paste into a look like, and then pouring castings made, this method than with the wooden mold, the cycle is short, and low cost.
The application of plastic mold upward trend, particularly in the application of an increasingly wide range of machinable plastic.
Aluminum die due to a high dimensional accuracy, light weight, it applied more widely. However, recent application of a downward trend, some have been replaced by plastic mold and cast iron mold.
