MMT Blog

What qualities make a good mold? How does high thermal conductivity aids in productivity? How can I best use a copper alloy and avoid common problems? What are the special fabrication issues when working with copper alloys? These are the questions answered by Materion Performance Alloys and Composites Innovation Pipeline Manager Robert Kusner during the company’s latest webinar on copper alloy molds.

(1) Strength. The importance of understanding the strength necessary to withstand molding stresses, measuring hardness or the stress at which the material will deform, tensile strength for ductility to determine mold performance and yield strength. 

The shift in the process of manufacturing cars and the type of cars we are making is not going to happen overnight, but it is happening. This shift is towards electrified and autonomous vehicles,  and the impact on mold manufacturers is already being seen, which is why controlling what you can, being flexible and managing your business is essential.

Mold builders need to ask themselves if their shops will be ready when an OEM or key tier supplier looking to remove costs from their operations suggest an aluminum mold.

There are sound technical and economic reasons why aluminum tooling is an appropriate choice for numerous automotive applications. OEMs who have studied aluminum, molders who have adapted their operations to realize the 30 to 50% cycle time advantages of an aluminum mold and mold builders who know how to design and build high-quality aluminum molds are reaping the benefits of this material.

Marquardt GmbH is a German family-owned company with 6,000 employees in 12 locations and nine countries that supplies mechatronic or electromechanical parts for the automotive and household equipment industries.  With 100 machines, the company produces around 3,000 different products and one step in the work process was performed manually: the cleaning of the injection molds.

Technicians would remove the mold, clean it and then install and align it again, yielding four-hours of production downtime. In addition, the cleaning was not guaranteed or reliable. The process needed to be optimized.