Matters Needing Attention in Mold Electroplating Processing

With the development of new technology and aluminum mold plate, especially for the design of injection mold, aluminum mold is more and more widely used in blow mold, R.I.M mold, rubber mold, structural foaming mold and R.T.M mold. Although it may not be suitable for all application fields, in fact, its use is becoming more and more common.

Everyone wants to prolong the production service life of the mold, for example, using traditional tool steel to make the mold, plating its surface with hard chromium or nickel metal, or using more specialized engineering coatings, which can prevent its surface from wear or corrosion and promote its better demoulding. After that, in order to seek the same goal, aluminum molds were adopted and practical solutions were found.

In order to produce decorative parts by injection molding, besides prolonging the service life of the mold, the manufacturer also hopes that the surface of the aluminum mold can maintain a certain degree of glossiness, so it is recommended to adopt the electroless nickel spraying process, because this method is helpful to prolong the service life of the mold surface finish and makes it relatively easy to produce decorative parts.

Because the texture of aluminum is soft, it is easy to be worn by plastic without surface coating, which accelerates the damage degree and changes the glossiness of injection molded parts. The electroless nickel coating can increase the mold surface by 50RC, which is enough to protect and prolong the glossiness and structure of the mold surface. Electroless nickel plating coating can obtain better surface finish quality than aluminum itself, but it must be pointed out that some surface treatment is needed before the mold can be electroplated. For example, in order to make it reach the quality level of lens, it is suggested that the surface of aluminum mold should be machined to the finish level of SPIA-3 first, and then before further polishing, 0.0003~0.0005 high phosphorus electroless nickel coating should be applied to make it reach the finish level of DIA quality.