Advantages and Market Development of the Smart Mold Industry
Date:
2025-02-17
Author:
For mold manufacturing enterprises, designing higher-end products is an effective way to enhance their competitiveness. Meanwhile, the trend toward intelligent social and daily life is driving mold manufacturing to transition from traditional practices into smart production. So, what trends will China’s mold industry exhibit in its future journey toward intelligent development? The design of entirely new molds represents the most critical step in improving product quality, and numerous factors must be taken into account, including the selection of mold materials, the practicality and safety of the mold structure, the machinability of mold components, and the ease of mold maintenance. In fact, as scientific and technological levels continue to advance, low-cost human resources are gradually being phased out, and automation and intelligent manufacturing have become key development directions for modern manufacturing.
For mold manufacturing enterprises, designing higher-end products is an effective way to enhance their competitiveness. Meanwhile, the trend toward intelligent social and daily life is driving mold manufacturing to shift from traditional practices into smart production. So, what trends will China’s mold industry see in its future journey toward intelligent development? The design of entirely new molds represents the most critical step in improving product quality, and numerous factors must be taken into account—including the selection of mold materials, the practicality and safety of the mold structure, the machinability of mold components, and the ease of mold maintenance. In fact, as scientific and technological levels continue to advance, low-cost human resources are gradually being phased out, and automation and intelligent manufacturing have become key development directions for modern manufacturing.
The challenges facing China’s mold industry—already positioned along the mid-to-low-end market—are becoming even more daunting. At this juncture, the transformation and upgrading of the mold industry have become particularly crucial. To achieve rapid development, China’s mold industry must embrace the development of intelligent molds. Today, with the Chinese government’s vigorous efforts to promote the integration of informatization and industrialization, the intelligentization of industrial information is accelerating, playing a positive role in boosting the development of the domestic intelligent mold industry.
Smart molds offer significant advantages, boosting industrial upgrading.
Smart molds differ from conventional mold types and generally refer to stamping dies and die-casting molds equipped with sensing and temperature-control functions, as well as injection molds manufactured using intelligent control methods that incorporate temperature control, injection parameters, and in-mold flow-state monitoring.
Compared with traditional molds, intelligent molds offer distinct advantages, including high technological content, high product added value, long service life, wide range of applications, and substantial market potential. High precision, sophistication, and cutting-edge technology are the most prominent features of intelligent molds. Using intelligent molds to manufacture products can further enhance both product quality and production efficiency, conserve materials more effectively, and enable automated production and green manufacturing. If intelligently utilized in traditional industries, these molds will significantly boost the productivity of existing manufacturing sectors, thereby facilitating smoother industrial transformation and upgrading efforts.
Development Goals for China’s Smart Molds during the 12th Five-Year Plan Period
During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the overarching goal for the development of intelligent mold manufacturing equipment in China’s strategic emerging industries is to drive the overall improvement of efficient, precise, and high-performance molds by promoting the development of intelligent molds. This will, in turn, boost the overall level of mold services provided to strategic emerging industries, meeting the supporting requirements of “intelligent manufacturing.” As a result, the level of intelligent molds will be significantly enhanced, laying a solid foundation for China’s mold industry to become one of the world’s leading mold powers by 2020.
Specifically, there are five key areas for implementation: First, we must elevate the level of efficient, precision, and high-performance molds—particularly those represented by intelligent molds—to an internationally advanced standard. By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, the level of intelligent molds should at least meet the basic requirements of intelligent manufacturing. Second, the proportion of efficient, precision, and high-performance molds—led by intelligent molds—should rise from the current approximately 35% of total molds to over 40% by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, with a medium- to long-term goal of reaching over 50%. Third, we must continuously shorten mold production cycles and enhance mold service life and stability. By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, the production cycle should be shortened by 20% to 30% compared to today, while mold service life should be extended by 20% to 30%, leveraging refined mold manufacturing techniques to improve reliability and stability.
Fourth, we must continuously enhance our level of digitalization and informatization. By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, enterprises producing high-efficiency, precision, and high-performance molds should basically achieve integration of CAD/CAM/CAE/PDM systems, and more than 40% of these enterprises should have essentially implemented information-based management. Fifth, automated mold production represents an important direction for future development; currently, it is still in the experimental and practical stage. By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period, we aim to have more than five mold enterprises capable of achieving automated mold production, and to make significant breakthroughs in intelligent, networked manufacturing technologies and management approaches for molds. Over the past decade, China’s mold industry has consistently maintained a rapid growth trend.
In the future, as industrial production technology requirements continue to rise, the high-end equipment manufacturing sector—whose flagship products include intelligent molds—will serve China’s industrial production with a brand-new look, providing strong support for the rapid development of China’s high-end equipment component manufacturing and related fields.
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