Disadvantages of silicone rubber mold
1. Poor thermal conductivity
2. Short life
3. Can't form real parts
4. The workpiece cannot be formed by hot injection process
5. The speed of mold making is diffuse. Silica gel usually takes 24 hours to cure, and polyurethane curing usually takes about 20 hours.
Advantages of silicone rubber mold
1. The production cycle is short. Generally, according to the CAD file of the workpiece, a silicone rubber soft mold and a polyurethane plastic part formed with the soft mold can be provided within a few days. Compared with the traditional metal mold injection prototype workpiece, the silicone rubber mold vacuum casting polyurethane prototype can shorten the development cycle by up to 90%.
2. Low cost, compared with CNC machined metal mold, the production cost of soft mold is much lower, generally only a fraction of the metal mold.
3. The elasticity is good, and the workpiece is easy to demold. In traditional molds, it is usually necessary to set the demolding slope so that the workpiece can be demolded smoothly after forming. When forming a workpiece with a silicone rubber mold, the mold has sufficient elasticity, so that the workpiece can often be demolded without adding a demolding slope, which can greatly simplify the design of the mold.
4. Good copy performance, silicone rubber has excellent copy performance, can reproduce the fine features on the master mold, and will not lose the dimensional accuracy.
