The eight ways to reduce the cost of
injection molding are as follows:
First, the production workshop
The layout of the production workshop needs to be considered from two aspects: under the conditions of production demand, the optimized layout according to the production process, while meeting the requirements of flexible energy consumption under specific production conditions.
1. The power supply has an appropriate margin while meeting the power required for stable production, so that the surplus is too large and the non-functional consumption is excessive.
2. Construct an efficient cooling water circulation facility and equip the cooling water system with an effective insulation system.
3. Optimize the overall production layout of the workshop. Many productions have successive processes, and reasonable coordination can reduce the time and energy consumption required for turnover and improve production efficiency.
4. Consider the most effective small units for separate control of lighting and other plant equipment.
5. Regular maintenance of the workshop equipment to avoid damage to the utility facilities, affecting the normal operation of the production, resulting in increased energy consumption.
The injection molding machine is a large energy consumer in the injection molding workshop, and the energy consumption is mainly two parts of the motor and the heating.
1. Select the right injection molding machine according to the characteristics of the product. The “big horse trolley” type of injection molding often means a lot of energy waste.
2. Select all-electric injection molding machine and hybrid injection molding machine, which has excellent energy-saving effect and can save energy by 20-80%.
3. Using new heating technology, such as electromagnetic induction heating, infrared heating, etc., can achieve 20-70% heating and energy saving.
4. Use effective insulation and insulation measures for heating and cooling systems to reduce heat and cold losses.
5. Maintain good lubrication of the transmission components of the equipment and reduce the energy consumption caused by increased friction or unstable operation of the equipment.
6. Use low compression hydraulic oil to reduce the waste of working energy in the hydraulic system.
7. Parallel action, multi-cavity injection molding, multi-component injection molding and other processing technologies can significantly save energy.
8. The traditional mechanical hydraulic injection molding machine also has a variety of energy-saving drive systems, which replace the traditional quantitative pump mechanical hydraulic injection molding machine with remarkable energy-saving effect.
9. Regularly maintain the heating and cooling pipelines to ensure that there are no impurities and scales inside the pipelines, and achieve the heating and cooling efficiency of the design.
10. Make sure the injection molding machine is in good working order. Unstable processing can result in defective products and increase energy consumption.
11. Make sure that the equipment used is suitable for the product being processed. For example, special screw is required for PVC processing.
Third, the injection mold
Mold structure and mold conditions often have a significant impact on the injection molding cycle and processing energy consumption.
1. Reasonable mold design, including runner design, gate form, number of cavities, heating and cooling water channels, etc., all help to reduce energy consumption.
2. The use of hot runner molds not only saves materials, but also reduces material recovery energy consumption. The molding process itself also has significant energy saving effects.
3. Contouring fast cooling and hot mold can significantly reduce processing energy consumption and achieve better surface quality.
4. Ensure that each cavity is filled evenly, which helps to shorten the molding cycle, ensure product quality uniformity, and has excellent energy saving effect.
5. Using CAE-assisted design technology for mold design, mold flow analysis and simulation, can reduce the energy consumption of mold debugging and multiple mold repair.
6. Under the premise of ensuring the quality of the product, the use of lower clamping force to shape, help to extend the life of the mold, which is conducive to the rapid filling of the mold, which helps to save energy.
7. Do mold maintenance work to ensure effective heating and cooling water flow conditions.
Fourth, peripheral equipment
1. Choose an auxiliary device that suits your ability to meet your job requirements without being too rich.
2. Maintain the equipment to ensure that the equipment is in normal working condition. Auxiliary equipment that is not working properly may cause unstable production or even poor quality of parts, resulting in increased energy consumption.
3. Optimize the work and operation sequence of the host and peripheral devices.
4. Optimize the mutual position of the peripheral equipment and the production equipment, and make the peripheral equipment closer to the host as much as possible without affecting the operating conditions.
5. Many ancillary equipment manufacturers provide on-demand systems that deliver significant energy savings.
6. Use fast die change equipment to reduce the waiting time required to switch products in production.
Five, materials
The energy consumption of different materials processing is different. At the same time, poor management of materials or improper management of recycled materials will increase production energy consumption.
1. Under the premise of meeting the performance of the product, the material with lower processing energy consumption should be preferred.
2. Prior to meeting performance and cost optimization, high mobility materials are preferred.
3. Note that materials from different suppliers may have different process conditions.
4. Drying of the material, preferably with drying, to avoid the energy of the material after the drying.
5. Do a good job of material preservation to prevent impurities or foreign matter from mixing into the material, resulting in poor product.
6. Some products are allowed to add certain recycled materials, but attention should be paid to the preservation and cleanliness of the recycled materials to avoid bad parts due to unclean materials.
Sixth, processing technology
1. Use the shortest molding cycle while meeting the performance of the product.
2. If there is no special factor, use the processing technology recommended by the supplier as much as possible.
3. Save all stable equipment and process parameters for specific products and molds, and shorten the adjustment time for the next replacement.
4. Optimize the process with lower clamping force, shorter cooling time and dwell time.
Seven, adopt new technology
1. Adopt auxiliary molding technology, such as gas assist, liquid assist, steam assist, micro foam injection molding technology.
2. Adopt a unitized molding scheme to reduce intermediate links.
3. Adopt new technologies such as in-mold welding, in-mold spraying, in-mold assembly, and in-mold decoration.
4. Using new low pressure forming technology to shorten the molding cycle while reducing the melt temperature.
5. Use an energy regeneration system.
Eight, production management
1. One-time production of high-quality products, reducing the non-performing rate is the biggest energy saving.
2. The maintenance of the entire production system is closely related to energy consumption. This involves not only the mainframe, but also the surrounding and factory equipment. For example, if the workshop is changing the mold crane, it needs manpower to change the mold, which will inevitably prolong the waiting time of the equipment and increase the energy consumption of the equipment.
3. Equipped with workshop energy monitoring system to facilitate the purposeful implementation of energy analysis and improvement.
4. When the equipment is shut down for maintenance, not only the maintenance contents and items of the equipment itself, but also the condition of the connection between the equipment and other systems, and the reliable performance of the work are checked.
5. Regularly compare with industry benchmarks to see if there is room for further improvement.
6. Establish reliable contracts and partnerships with suppliers, which is beneficial to enterprise energy management.
