Amazing Benefits of Rapid Silicone Molding
When it comes to launching a product, a lot of things go behind the scene. First, you'll require a prototype for the visual representation of your idea or design. It will also provide a glimpse view of the final product to all stakeholders before they can it can be finally released onto the market.
The only limiting about prototyping is the fact that it can be quite time-consuming and expensive. But the good news is there are a wide variety of prototyping techniques at your disposal, so you just need to choose which one will be best suited to your production or manufacturing needs.
One of them being, silicone molding; it's popularly known as vacuum casting. Silicone molding is the perfect prototyping technique if you have a limited budget, its costs very low per batch. Silicone molding allows you to have an excellent 3D version of the product allowing for testing and evaluation before mass-production can be fully rolled out.
A brief background into silicone molding
Silicone molding is sometimes referred to as vacuum casting due to its close similarity to how they work, in this technique, a prototype is normally created through the used casting with the use of a specialized technique or at times a 3d printer. By using this a silicone mold is produced from the master.
The silicone molding tech has been around since the 1960s, it has been around for quite some time, and thanks to emerging technologies it has significantly improved when it comes to the manufacture of prototypes.
In silicone molding, polyurethane material is normally injected into the silicone through the use of a vacuum creating a prototype. The good thing about this is the fact that the silicone mold can be used repeatedly till it finally wears out.
The silicone molds allow the production of parts and products in small batches in a cost-effective way. Each firm or workshop will know that creating/developing an entire batch just for testing is not a wise decision as it's expensive and time-consuming.
These prototypes are vital as they will be used for functional testing of a specific part and product. They will serve their purpose to check the viability of a product according to its visual and functionality. It's true when we say that Silicone Molding play a crucial and vital role in the manufacturing process
Why silicone molds?
Rapid prototyping normally utilizes silicone molds making them affordable compared to metal molds, another reason is they come with high resistance which enables them to be heated and re-used. Even though they are not durable as metal molds, but they are suitable for low-volume manufacturing. Another vital reason is, they can be used with a wide variety of materials. The manufacturer can also tweak the material hardness color using different dyes as well as clarity. Silicone molds also offer a certain degree of transparency which allows the material to be tinted or polished.
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