What is the difference between liquid silicone injection molding process and silicone injection molding process?
Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR), as a high-performance elastic material, has been widely used in various fields such as healthcare, automotive, electronics, and home appliances due to its excellent high and low temperature resistance, electrical insulation, chemical stability, and biocompatibility. Different molding processes directly affect the final quality, cost, and production efficiency of the product.
Liquid silicone gel injection process
The liquid silicone injection molding process, also known as liquid silicone injection molding or LSR injection molding, is a high-precision and high-efficiency production method for silicone products. This process uses two-component liquid silicone material, which is accurately proportioned by a high-precision metering pump, mixed and injected into a preheated and tightly closed mold. The temperature and pressure inside the mold cause the silicone to quickly solidify, forming the final product. This process has the following significant characteristics:
1. High precision: Due to the good fluidity of liquid silicone, it can be fully filled in the mold, thus producing products with high surface smoothness and extremely high dimensional accuracy, suitable for manufacturing medical device components, precision electronic component casings, etc. that require extremely high precision.
2. High degree of automation: The entire injection, curing, and demolding process can be highly automated, greatly reducing manual intervention and improving production efficiency and product consistency.
3. High production efficiency: The mold design is reasonable and the temperature control is precise, making each injection molding cycle short and enabling rapid large-scale production.
4. High material utilization rate: Liquid silicone produces almost no waste, reducing resource waste and environmental pollution.
However, the liquid silicone injection process requires high equipment and molds, with significant initial investment, complex mold design, and long manufacturing cycles
Silicone injection molding process
In contrast, the silicone injection molding process is more traditional and widely used. It uses solid silicone particles to be heated and melted by a screw injection molding machine, injected into the mold cavity under high pressure, cooled and solidified to obtain the finished product. This process has the following characteristics:
1. Wide applicability: It can process silicone materials of various hardness and colors to meet the needs of different application scenarios.
2. Relatively low mold cost: Compared to liquid silicone injection molds, silicone injection molds have a relatively simple structure and design, and lower manufacturing costs.
3. Flexible process: Injection pressure, temperature, and time parameters can be adjusted according to product requirements to achieve the best molding effect.
However, there are also some shortcomings in silicone injection molding, such as long molding cycles, slightly inferior surface smoothness compared to liquid silicone injection molded products, and difficulty in injection molding for high-precision and complex structured products, which can easily produce defects such as burrs and burrs.
Detailed analysis of the differences between the two
Material state: The liquid silicone injection process uses liquid silicone, while silicone injection molding uses solid silicone particles that are heated and melted before use.
Molding accuracy: The liquid silicone injection process has higher molding accuracy due to its good flowability of materials and high-precision mold design.
Production efficiency: The liquid silicone injection process has advantages in automation and molding speed, making it suitable for large-scale production.
Equipment and molds: The liquid silicone injection process has higher requirements for equipment and molds, and requires a large initial investment; Silicone injection molding has advantages in terms of equipment popularity and mold cost.Application areas: The liquid silicone injection process is more suitable for products that require extremely high precision and appearance, such as medical implants, high-precision electronic components, etc; Silicone injection molding is widely used in various fields such as daily necessities and automotive parts due to its flexibility.
In summary, both the liquid silicone injection molding process and the silicone injection molding process have their own advantages. The choice of process depends on the specific needs of the product, production scale, and cost considerations. With the continuous advancement of technology, these two processes are also constantly optimized and improved, providing more possibilities for the production of silicone products.
