Why you should find a high-quality mold maker instead of a cheap mold supplier?

A mold is basic equipment for all shaped components or finished products. Only after the mold is made firstly, the subsequent products will appear. Because of the existence of the mold, the product can be produced in large quantities, which makes the single consumer product price much cheaper. The cost of mold making is not as low as a single consumer product, it is a 'big' cost to be paid in the first place. But like buying other consumer goods, your different requirements for quality and details will have different prices due to mold design concept, material cost, and manufacturing process.

You may say that you will find the cheapest mold supplier to reduce the cost, but the low-priced mold may not bring you high profits, or maybe, on the contrary, it could cause you a greater loss. First, let's briefly talk about several factors that affect the mold price, and then, let’s talk about why high-quality molds are the ‘cheapest’, and why they can reduce costs better for you.

3 things that affect mold cost:

1. Mold service life

If your product needs to be mass-produced, then you need high-quality, long-life steel, such as general soft material P20, 738H, the injection molding service life can be 300,000 ~ 500,000 shots. And hardened materials such as H13, 1.2344, 1.2343, 1.2767, etc., the life can reach to 800,000 ~ 1,000,000 shots. For very low volume production, Rapid prototyping tools will be ok, it normally needs material of Aluminum or very soft steel S50C. Steels with long molding life are definitely more expensive than those with short injection molding life. Moreover, different brands of steel will have differences in price and quality too.

2. The complexity of the mold and the choice of the design concept

Obviously, the complexity of the mold will have a great impact on the cost of mold manufacturing. The more complex the mold is, the higher the price will be. Then, there is the design concept that will affect mold cost. For example,  what brand of mold components to use? how to use sliders & lifters? And how to use other critical accessories, such as hot runners, hydraulic cylinders, and so on. In addition, the precision of the mold determines what kind of equipment and what kind of processing technology is used to manufacture it, which will have a great impact on the cost of the mold too. Of course, A higher quality mold will make the product more stable and cost-saving, besides, the produced goods will be of a higher quality level too, and this will build your customer confidence and your reputation with them.

3. The above 2 points are the most important factors affecting the cost of the mold, but there are also other factors that will also affect the overall price. For example, the service and management level of the supplier, including but not limited to: the timely response of communication, the fast handling of emergencies and the timely & complete after-sales service, etc.

So why are high-quality molds the 'cheapest'? The reasons are as follows

1.  Your high-volume production needs to be consistent and fast so that the tooling cost can be amortized on each product. The more products are produced, the lower the cost of each product will be. Likewise, the faster the speed, the more products will be produced, and thus the lower the price of individual products will be. But if the mold you buy is not of high quality, problems frequently happen and need to be repaired often, a lot of production time will be wasted. At the same time, the repair & maintenance costs will be high, which will cause a lot of unexpected secondary costs. More importantly, if there is a problem with the time to launch the goods to market because of the low-quality mold, or delayed delivery to your customers, the losses might be huge.

2.  For the same mold-making project, if the basic materials, components, and design are similar, the price from suppliers should not be too much different. However,  if one of the prices is very low, then you have to consider whether there is an invisible problem unknown. Usually, there are 4 reasons:

* The cheap supplier didn't fully understand your requirements or did not quote according to your requirements.

* There is the possibility that he used fake materials or/and used other substitutes of low-quality parts etc.

* Some components require precision equipment to do machining, maybe they use lower-precision equipment to reduce processing costs.

* Maybe they just want to get the order first, and then, add extra costs in other places, for example, when modifying the mold, reporting a very high modification cost. Or additional cost for mold trial, plastic materials, sample delivery fees, etc. Then, in the production process, take all means to reduce costs. In this case, cheap suppliers bring you not only additional invisible costs for subsequent production, but also possible hidden costs due to service, quality, delivery, and other problems.

Any mold project, welcome to contact SWY MOULD.