Advantage 2 Variant product material
From material selection to mass production, our professional team of mechanical engineers is responsible for complete solutions.
Mechanical products rarely use just one single material. Most often, there are two or more different materials that must be utilized in creating a mechanical product. Denatured materials are becoming more and more common thanks to their wide range of engineering applications. Others include engineering plastic PC + composite plastic ABS, nylon plastic and fiberglass and alloy metals.
With aluminum alloy, for example, there are several manufacturing methods that may be applied. These include metal casting, metal fabrication, metal extrusion, metal forging, and more. It’s enough to leave anyone wondering which is best! Our customers don’t have to worry about going it alone in their searches for the right manufacturing methods.
Chain-Ray is a provider of overall solutions within mechanical engineering. Moreover, we have a material database that contains more than 25,000 materials. Our experts, who are familiar with these various materials, can propose the most suitable manufacturing methods based on the customer’s unique needs and wants. Our team is fully responsible for ensuring the best choices are made, leaving you to focus on your key business instead of manufacturing details.
Below, six manufacturing processes are outlined. The determination of which is right for each customer is a complex process, ensuring it’s feasible with product design concepts and other requirements.
- Plastic Injection Molding
The most common range of products used in production is plastics. There are many advantages to using plastic, including lower costs, quick production speeds, and high efficiency. Plastic requires a shorter production cycle and can meet many diverse customer needs. Chain-Ray is well-versed at managing plastic products that combine different polymers or colors, also known as “two-shot” injection molding or 2K injection molding. The precision and integrity of the drawing are needed to create an exact design, along with the choice of the proper manufacturing method, to effectively complete the plastic injection molding process. Chain-Ray’s mold engineering team ensures that your products turn out the same as they were in the design drawing process, exceeding your expectations every time.
- Sheet Metal Fabrication
Due to the high efficiency of the manufacturing process, the stable quality, and having less variability in production, the application of metal fabrication is very wide. The industries it’s commonly found in include aerospace, consumer household products, clocks and watches, and larger plates such as those used in automobile engine covers and doors. As is the case with other metal manufacturing processes, metal fabrication is more suitable for products with a uniform thickness, as well as those without a complicated structure design.
- Metal Die Casting
Metal die casting is similar to the principle of plastic injection molding. It is suitable for high-precision parts that require complex shapes, have large ranges and thin walls, lighter weights, and possess different structural design thicknesses. Additionally, die casting is appropriate for smooth surfaces or lower surface roughness, and small tolerances. It boasts high production efficiency and lower waste, so it is widely used within metal technology. For customers who require advanced metal parts, die casting is a good solution to meet the requirements of having a strong structure along with great aesthetics.
- Metal Powder Metallurgy
This process involves first using metal powder as a raw material. Subsequently, it is compacted and sintered. The most common products made by metal powder metallurgy are gears. This material is suitable for products with demands of high quantities, lower cost, and extremely hard material.
- Lost Wax Casting
Lost wax casting is sometimes called dewaxing casting, coated casting, or precision casting. This method can be used for products with simple or complex shapes. For example, the metal model of the Eiffel Tower, a must-buy souvenir when visiting France, is produced by lost wax casting. If you have delicate products, complex products, or your design is a bit out of the ordinary, >lost wax castinglost wax casting, so the application range is also quite wide.
- Metal Injection Molding
Metal injection molding (abbreviated MIM) combines the metal strength of powder metallurgy with the characteristics of plastic injection molding. It is considered to be a very modern manufacturing method. Extremely complex mechanical parts can be made at a high rate of productivity using metal injection molding. The yield rate is likewise high, and the sintering process boosts the dependability of the finished items. When creating exceedingly precise and tiny metal parts, metal injection molding is the best option.