Silicone mold is an easiest method in rapid tooling, usually we will cast rapid prototypes with silicone. However, the services life of silicone mold is short, one mold only can copy 10-30 pieces products. It has good elasticity and replication performance. The silicone replication mold can be used without casting draft, without affecting the dimensional accuracy. Also, it has a good splitting property, and can be directly poured as a whole without dividing the upper and lower molds. 

The production of silicone molds generally goes through several processes such as forging, cutting and heat treatment. In order to ensure the manufacturing quality of the mold and reduce production costs, the material should have good forgeability, cutting workability, hardenability, hardenability and grind ability; it should also have small oxidation, decarburization sensitivity and quench Deformation and cracking tendency.

The requirements of silicone mold manufacturing

1. Low hot forging deformation resistance, good plasticity, wide forging temperature range, low forging cracking and low tendency to precipitate network carbide.

2. Large amounts of cutting, low tool loss, low surface roughness.

3. It has good oxidation resistance when heated at high temperature, slow decarburization, is insensitive to heating medium, and has little tendency to produce pitting. 

4. Uniform and high surface hardness after quenching.

5.After quenching, a deeper hardened layer can be obtained, which can be hardened by using a mild quenching medium.  

Above is the brief introduction of silicone mold during manufacturing, if you are interested in silicone mold manufacturing or you have any prototypes need to be made, feel free to contact us at enquriy@nice-rapidtooling.com or call us (+86) 760 8996 2989. Welcome to your enquiry!