3D Printing vs Silicone Molding vs Steel Mold

3D Printing, Silicone Molding, Steel Mold, Which one is best solution for you

Are you facing dilemma of choosing between 3D printing, silicone molding and steel molding during the new product development? In this article, we will analyze three major processes and bring you a clear understanding of how to accurately match production method according to stage of product development and market capacity. If you still have doubts, please contact our professional engineers at the end of this article for customized new product development solutions.

 

3D Printing——Agile Development with Zero Mold Cost

What is 3D Printing?

 3D printing is a process of building three-dimensional solids directly by stacking materials (plastic/resin/metal) layer by layer, without need of molds to maximize design freedom. It is a process of manufacturing objects based on a digital model in an accumulative manner of materials. Unlike CNC machining (subtractive material manufacturing) or casting (iso-material manufacturing), the mainstream process consists of three material accumulation methods: FDM melt extrusion of thermoplastics, SLA UV laser curing of liquid resins, and SLS laser sintering of polymer powders. After post-processing of molded blanks, finished parts can be obtained.

What Information Do Customers Need to Provide?

If your newly designed product requires 3D prototyping, you need to provide the necessary documents: 3D model (STP/IGS format) and parameter requirements: dimensional tolerances, surface treatment requirements (painting/plating), functional requirements (temperature/impact resistance), and application scenarios of final product. Our engineers will analyze the information you provide and provide you with professional production feasibility suggestions. If you don’t have a designer to draw 3D drawings for you, Grandshine can also provide you with product design services.

Product Types Suitable for 3D Printing

3D printing process is mainly used in early stage of product development, for the verification of product design concepts, analysis of product structure, demonstration of basic functions. 3D printing can achieve the traditional process can not be realized shaped structure, such as skeleton parts, medical equipment, surgical guides, dental models, and so on, and can be realized in low-cost demonstration of feasibility of product design.

What materials can be produced by 3D printing?

With advantage of low-cost rapid prototyping, 3D printing can produce plastic products such as PLA, ABS, Nylon, PETG, etc.; high-strength and high-temperature-resistant products such as PC, PP, Peek, and photosensitive resin and standard resin products with high precision and smooth surface. If you are not sure which material you need for 3D printing, just explain to our engineering team the application scenario of your product and required test category, and we can provide you with professional advice.

Advantages and Disadvantages of 3D Printing

The advantages of 3D printing lie in the ability to produce at zero mold cost, order from 1 piece and fast delivery within 5 days, and the ability to quickly justify product design at low cost, support complex structures in one go and design modifications and updates.

 

However, 3D printing also has obvious disadvantages, such as high cost per piece, low efficiency in mass production, and the inability of some products to conduct functional testing or mass production. If your product is in the primary stage of design, you can use 3D printing for product design demonstration and multiple modifications and adjustments. If you need to make small-lot trial production, you can consider Grandshine’s silicone molding service.

 

Silicone Molding——Gold Choice for Small-Batch Trial Production

What is Silicone Molding?

Silicone re-molding (also known as vacuum injection, silicone soft mold) is a kind of use of 3D printing prototype parts as a master model, copy the silicone mold, and then use the mold in a vacuum environment in a small batch casting production of plastic parts. Its core purpose is to solve the demand for small batch trial production (dozens to hundreds of pieces), without opening premise of expensive steel mold, quickly get close to performance of injection molded parts of product, for the pre-marketing test or pre-product user experience.

Silicone Molding Production Process

There are 4 main steps in Silicone Re-molding:

Step 1: 3D printing (e.g. photosensitive resin/SLA) is used to produce a high-precision product prototype (i.e. master mold), in general, the accuracy can reach 0.2mm.

Step 2: Fix the master mold in mold frame and pour liquid silicone; after curing, cut the silicone and remove master mold to form a hollow cavity (i.e. silicone soft mold).

Step 3: Put silicone soft mold into vacuum casting equipment, inject material PC, ABS, PP, POM, PU and other materials into silicone mold; after curing, demold and obtain the replica.

Step 4: Surface treatment, such as oil spraying or plating process.

 

What kind of products can be produced by silicone re-molding?

Silicone re-molding can produce small quantities of various products:

Hard material (such as ABS, PP, PC) products: such as shells, buttons, protective cover, etc..

Soft materials (such as TPU, TPR) products: such as medical equipment handles, soft gaskets, automotive interior parts.

Optical grade transparent material products: such as scanner lenses and optical products.

Flame-retardant or food-grade special material products: such as household appliances shell or silicone kitchen supplies.

The precision of silicone molding can reach 0.2mm, which is almost equivalent to the dimensional accuracy of steel molded products. This technology can be widely used in consumer electronics, medical equipment, automotive, gifts, household appliances and other fields.

Reliability of Silicone Molding

You may worry that small batch products produced by silicone re-molding can not pass the reliability test. You don’t need to worry too much about this issue, most of silicone re-molded products can reach 80% of strength of injection molded parts, which is solid and reliable for short-term use. In addition, this small batch product can pass -30℃~80℃ temperature cycle test. It can also pass EN71-3 (toys) and RoHS (electronics) certification tests. Therefore, the short-term silicone molded products are solid and reliable, and can meet your pre-market sales needs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Silicone Molding

Silicone re-mold has a great advantage, its mold cost is only 1-5% of the steel mold ($200-$800), mold lead time is also very fast, basically 10-15 days to deliver the first batch of goods. Steel molds takes 20-40 days, and product development cycle takes at least 45 days. Silicone re-molding can support small batch production, a set of silicone re-molding can produce 20-50 pieces of products with greater flexibility, and surface of product is close to injection molded parts. Steel molds usually require a minimum order of 1,000 pieces or more, and color customization will also have a minimum number of restrictions.

However, there are also obvious disadvantages of silicone molding. First of all, the dimensional accuracy of product can only reach ±0.2mm (lower than steel molds – high-precision steel molds can reach 0.01mm). Secondly, weather resistance of silicone re-molded products is poor, easy to yellow and deformed for a long time, unable to meet the needs of long-term use. Finally, mold life is short, a set of mold production more than 50 pieces may appear deformation and risk of increased dimensional error.

Our Silicone Molding Service

If your new product development forecast is less than 200 pieces, you can consider Grandshine’s silicone molding process, the maximum size of silicone molding is usually within 1000mm x 1000mm, if product development forecast is more than 500 pieces, we recommend using steel molding. Grandshine provides low MOQ steel mold production support for startups and new projects, with first orders starting from 500 pieces, helping you to get high precision and quality products at low cost for market testing and validation.

 

Steel Mold——The Optimal Production Solution for Mass Production

What is a Steel Mold?

Steel mold is a metal mold used for high-volume, high-precision production in the manufacturing industry, usually made of high-quality steel (such as P20, H136, NAK80, 718H, etc.) by CNC machining, electric discharge (EDM), polishing and other precision processes.

There are 5 main product mold types for steel molds

Plastic injection molds: mainly applied to the mass production of plastic parts, products including cell phones, tablet PCs and other electronic products shell, medical equipment shell, automotive interior panels, lampshades, toothbrushes, bottle caps, kitchen appliances shells and other daily necessities.

Die-casting molds: mainly used in aluminum/zinc/magnesium alloy and other metal products mass production, the products include tablet PC center frame, power tools metal shell, industrial products such as heat sinks.

Stamping molds: mainly used in metal sheet punching/bending/stretching, products include cell phone metal center frame, inverter and energy storage battery shell, stainless steel pots and other kitchen utensils.

Blow molds: mainly used in the mass production of hollow plastic products, products include beverage bottles, cosmetic bottles and other container products.

Silicone molds: mainly applied to mass production of soft silicone products, such as scanner handles, bicycle handles, silicone baby products, silicone ice grids, silicone cake molds, silicone candy molds, silicone seals and other products.

Grandshine has 20 years of experience in mold production and can produce customized injection molds, silicone molds, die-casting molds and stamping molds for you for various products. Grandshine can provide you with one-stop production management of product supply chain from product design to mold production to bulk production and product assembly.

 

Steel Mold Production Process

There are 8 key stages in whole production process of steel mold.

(1) Product analysis and design: Our engineering team will check the product design drawings for draft angles, meat thickness, parting lines, etc., optimize the structure to reduce risk of mold opening, provide DFM report and complete 3D mold design and mold flow analysis.

2) Steel selection: Usually choose hardened steel H136 and quenching and hardening treatment, so that the mold can reach 500,000 times of service life.

(3) CNC precision machining.

(4) special processing (EDM and wire cutting, etc.): accuracy of ± 0.003mm, surface finish Ra 0.4μm.

(5) Surface treatment: according to demand of final effect of product, polishing, tanning or surface hardening (e.g. nitriding), to enhance surface texture of product.

6）Module assembly.

(7) T0 trial mold and correction: verify whether the structure and appearance of product meet requirements, and assess whether production efficiency can meet demand for efficient mass production.

8) Mold maintenance and delivery.

Each of these 8 stages is a great test of engineer’s professional and technical level. A good team of engineers can make every detail of mold extremely precise in each production stage. An unprofessional engineering team will not be able to achieve a high level of mold quality and precision, which may lead to various product quality problems in later stages of production, as well as delays in the delivery schedule due to constant mold modifications, etc.

Grandshine’s tooling engineering team has 20 years of experience in tooling production and specializes in production of high-quality precision molds, which have been used for production of United Airlines, T-Mobile, Samsung, Lenovo and other companies.

 

Advantages of Steel Molds

As an important carrier of modern intelligent manufacturing, the core advantages of steel mold are reflected in three dimensions of high precision, long life and mass production economy. Compared with silicone mold and aluminum mold, steel mold has 7 obvious advantages:

First, steel mold has an absolute accuracy advantage: accuracy up to ± 0.01mm (silicone compound mold accuracy is usually ± 0.2mm), surface finish up to Ra 0.02μm. It is important production process of high-precision products, medical devices, automotive lenses and other .

Second, long service life: steel mold up to 300,000-1,000,000 times mold life, mass production of single piece cost is very low. For example, Apple cell phone frame die-casting mold (SKD61 steel) continuous production of 2 million pieces still maintain ± 0.03mm accuracy. Silicone compound mold mold life is usually only 20-50 times, not conducive to mass production.

Third, mass production of single piece cost is very low: thanks to long life of steel mold and high productivity, the early stage only need to invest in cost of a mold, you can produce large quantities of products, cost of a single piece of only one-tenth or even lower than the cost of silicone mold or 3D printing.

Fourth, diversity of production materials: steel mold can be processed PC, PP, ABS, TPU, TPR, TPE, POM, glass fiber reinforced plastics, PEEK high-temperature engineering plastics, liquid silicone, die-casting liquid metal and other materials to meet the different application requirements of  products.

Fifth, production efficiency is very high: production cycle of a single piece of steel mold only takes 15-60 seconds, and daily production capacity of a single injection molding machine can reach 2,000-5,000 pieces. Silicone compound mold mainly relies on manual operation, a single piece of production cycle usually takes 2-4 hours.

Sixth, diversity of surface treatment: steel mold to support the production of polished, leather grain, wood grain, matte grain, geometric microstructure and thousands of textures, while the silicone mold usually only support a limited number of textures.

Seventh, Consistency guarantee of batch product quality: products produced by the same set of steel molds can maintain a high degree of consistency in size, function and structure.

 

Our Steel Mold Service

Steel molds are produced in a wide range of product fields, covering consumer electronics, medical devices, automotive parts, pet products, daily necessities, kitchen and bathroom appliances and many other fields. If your products need to enter mass production, and need to maintain low cost per piece, stable and strict quality requirements, and need to pass a series of tests or comply with industry standards, then steel molds are the ideal choice for your production.

Grandshine provides you with professional steel mold design, production and finished product mass production services. With our own production bases in China and Malaysia, ISO9001 and ISO14001 certified and awarded as a national high-tech enterprise, Grandshine is your reliable mold supplier.

New Product Development Recommended Path

Three-stage advancement method (take intelligent hardware products as an example)  

Stage 1: Proof of concept (1-10 pieces), using 3D printing process, the main goal is used to check the reasonableness of appearance and structure of product design.

Stage 2: User testing (50-300 pieces), using silicone re-molding process, the main goal is to put low-cost small batch products into market, collect user feedback, validate user needs, verify the feasibility of product design, and lay foundation for final mass production.

Stage 3: Formal mass production (>500 pieces/month), adopting steel molding process, the main goal is to be used for mass production, to realize automated production, to control the cost and to ensure the stability of quality.  

 

Grandshine Manufacturing Solutions

Grandshine, as a professional new product development expert, we provide you with a full chain of services from product design → design review → 3D printing sample validation → silicone re-molding small batch trial production → steel mold mass production → product assembly and delivery.

We have our own mold factories and production workshops in China and Malaysia, with a monthly production capacity of up to 500,000 pcs. Our factories are ISO9001 and ISO14001 certified, and have been awarded the title of National High-Tech Enterprise.

If you have any problems in supply chain management or want to customize your own unique product design, our team of engineers can provide you with professional services. Contact Email: Kaiwin@grashine.com or WhatsApp: 0086 13823302586!