Research and Analysis on Current Status of Automotive Panel Molds

Foreword

The development of the automotive industry has provided great market opportunities for the development of the automotive mold industry. According to relevant data, in the developed countries such as the United States and Japan, automobile molds account for about 50% of the entire mold industry. In China, only about one-third of the mold products serve the automotive industry. Therefore, the automotive mold market has considerable room for development. The automotive panel mold is an important part of the entire automobile mold.

Driven by the automotive industry in the past two years, the market demand for automotive panel molds has increased significantly. FAW Mold Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Dongfeng Automobile Mold Co., Ltd., Tianjin Automobile Mold Co., Ltd., Sichuan Chengfei Integrated Technology Co., Ltd. and other four major mold factories have the capacity of about 2 million man-hours for large and medium-sized automobile cover parts. Newly emerged The production capacity of more than 20 auto cover mold companies, such as Push Mould Co., Ltd., Beijing BYD Mould Co., Ltd., Harbin Hafei Auto Mould Co., Ltd., Yuejin Auto Group Nanjing Mould Equipment Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Qianyuan Auto Body Co., Ltd., are also increasing. They are the main force of the current industry. Although these enterprises have developed rapidly and their technical level has greatly improved, they still cannot meet the needs in the design, production, and manufacturing of automotive panel molds. Then, China's automotive panel molds and the world How far is the difference in advanced level? Where is the difference?

design

Automotive industry developed in Europe and the United States in the automotive panel mold design, a large number of three-dimensional CAD design, the proportion of up to 70% to 90%, Pro/E, UG and other software applications are also common, use these software to create automatic drawing The accuracy is high, the calculated data obtained is reliable, and the database function is strong, so the design efficiency is high. Relative to the advanced level in foreign countries, the domestic design of the car cover mold is ineffective. A batch of large and medium-sized automotive panel mold manufacturing enterprises in China have successively introduced a certain number of CAD systems and configured some special software for design and analysis, which has achieved certain economic benefits. However, due to various reasons, many small and medium-sized enterprises still remain at the stage of manually designing molds, adopting traditional design methods and 2D CAD designs, resulting in the standardization of design, low development and application levels, and low efficiency. The accumulation of design theory and practical experience has lagged far behind abroad.

In addition, on the basis of the design and manufacturing of the cover, there are also great differences at home and abroad. In China, a large number of samples are based on physical samples and less on numerical models. On the contrary, foreign countries rely heavily on mathematical models.

Stamping process analysis

Stamping processability refers to the adaptability of stamping parts to craftworks, that is, whether the size, size accuracy and benchmarking, structure and shape of stamping parts designed meet the technological requirements of stamping processing. Automotive stampings should have good craftsmanship and economy. The important signs to measure the level of stamping parts include the number of stamping parts, the number and size of the parts of the body, and the structure of stamping parts. Therefore, the improvement of automotive stamping process design For the development of automotive cover mold has a crucial role.

Currently in China, during the stamping process analysis of automotive panel molds, some companies also use 2D CAD. Only a few well-established companies use CAE. Therefore, in the analysis of stamping processes, the formability of parts cannot be evaluated in advance. The trial success rate is low and the trial time is long. In industrialized countries, the application of CAE technology has matured. The use of CAE software in die design can simulate metal deformation processes, analyze the distribution of stress and strain, and predict defects such as cracking, wrinkling, and spring back. Therefore, developed countries such as Europe, America, Japan, etc. use 3DSOLID and CAE in the stamping process analysis of automotive panel molds, and the success rate of trial molding is as high as 90%.

casting

With the rapid development of the automotive industry and the advancement of industrial technology, users have become increasingly demanding for castings. The lightweight, thin-walled, and toughened castings have become an inevitable trend of development. At present, the production of domestic automobile panel die castings mostly uses FMC foundry blanks, but the quality of solid type materials is relatively poor, and the model processing and detection methods are relatively backward. The remainder of the castings is mostly 8-16 mm, and the balance is large, and the produced ones are produced. Castings are not dense enough and have poor strength. In foreign developed countries, although FMC casting blanks are also used, the models use high-speed numerically controlled milling, and the castings have a small margin of only about 6 mm. Microcomputer control systems are used in casting and the castings are finely organized.

manufacture

There are also many gaps in the manufacture of automotive panel molds at home and abroad.

Currently, the penetration rate of domestic adoption of CAM technology is not high enough, and the level of application is not balanced, and CAM technology is widely used abroad.

High-speed cutting is a processing technology characterized by high cutting speed, high feed rate, and high processing quality. Its machining efficiency is several times or even more than ten times higher than that of traditional cutting processes. The application of this technology in China has been very high. For a long period of time, but in recent years it has only been used in mold manufacturing. The application level is low, and there are few application companies. Many skilled workers cannot master the key technologies of high-speed cutting and are not familiar with their operating environment, leading to high-speed cutting technology in China. Did not play its due role. In particular, on the way of car cover mold processing, a few companies have adopted high-speed cutting processing technology, and more enterprises have adopted numerical control, and have introduced a large number of CNC machine tools to process sub-processes. Because the high-speed cutting technology is not well utilized, the production efficiency is low, the precision of the produced mold is poor, the margin is large, and the amount of bench work is large.

High-speed cutting technology and high-speed processing equipment have achieved rapid development in foreign countries. High-speed machining and multi-process machining have been completed in one setup. Not only is the production efficiency high, but also the precision is high. The amount of fitter training is small, and the production cycle of the mold is greatly shortened. Development, design, manufacturing, and business integration of computer integration projects.

Training and testing

At present, due to the backwardness of training technology and equipment, in the training and debugging of automotive panel molds, many manual operations are used in China, and a large number of domestically-made, poor-performance, and low-accuracy matching equipments are used. Labor intensity, large amount of mold, long cycle, high cost. In foreign countries, a large number of research and development presses with a rollover and digital display function or a research and development system are used. The training workload is small, and the precision can reach 0.02mm. Combining with CAE technology, one-off flushing can be completed and the length is greatly reduced. Debugging cycle. Some companies in foreign countries have developed computer simulation and debugging in recent years, and the effect is better.

In the detection of automotive panel molds, in recent years, although some mold companies have introduced foreign three-coordinate measuring machine equipment for measurement, they have not yet mastered their key technologies and are limited to the special position of the automotive panel molds. Automatic detection, and more mold companies use universal measurement methods, low accuracy, stereotypes based on the use of measurements. While foreign three-dimensional measurement technology has matured, most companies have adopted a large number of three-coordinate measuring machines and CAD/CAM system-on-line measurement technologies. The test data and CAD/CAM data are automatically analyzed, calculated and read out. Errors, implementation of computer control, display and printing, accurate and reliable.

Standard Parts

At present, in the face of a large domestic automotive mold market, domestic automobile mold manufacturers are somewhat powerless, especially in the design, production, and manufacturing of automotive panel molds. The standardization of automotive molds has mostly stayed at the preliminary stage. The production of mold standard parts is small and the product level is low. Although many automobile companies adopt standard parts, many rely on imports. The auto body mold standard has not been able to move closer to the international community. A variety of typical mold structures and processes have not yet been established and perfected. Moreover, an industry-standard computer sales network has not yet been formed. The supply period of mold standard parts is long and the product variety is incomplete.

In comparison, foreign auto body mold standard parts supply channels are smooth, with high commercialization degree, complete varieties and export to countries in the world.

Overall coordination and corporate management

Compared with foreign countries, domestic companies still have many gaps in the overall coordination of molds and enterprise management. Many foreign companies have the ability to coordinate the molds of the entire vehicle, and can deliver hundreds of molds to many companies at the same time on the same platform, and thus can deliver complete vehicles quickly and with high quality. At home, most companies have no ability in this area. Only a few companies have similar capabilities, but the overall level of coordination still lags behind foreign advanced companies.

In enterprise management, information management has been widespread abroad, while only a few companies in China have implemented information management. An enterprise no matter how advanced technology it has, the imperfections in management will lead to the overall production level of its products and the comprehensive capabilities of the enterprise lagging behind that of enterprises with better management. Therefore, enterprise management is a systematic project, and informatization is the direction of development. We must pay full attention to the informatization of enterprise management.

Although China's auto parts mold has a big gap with the international advanced level in terms of design, manufacturing, and standard parts, but we also have our own advantages. Our country's auto molds are low in cost, the price is relatively cheap, and the production cycle is also shortened. In recent years, the level of design and manufacturing has also greatly improved. Therefore, in the process of developing China's automotive panel molds, on the one hand, we must see the existing problems, and from time to time spur in order to achieve greater progress; on the other hand, we must actively improve technology and improve the design and manufacturing level. , Drawing on advanced foreign technology, introducing advanced equipment, speeding up the standardization work of auto parts molds, doing well in the formulation and implementation of standards, and striving to catch up with the advanced level in the world; at the same time, vigorously developing our country's auto molds rely solely on an auto mold enterprise is Far from enough, automobile mold enterprises, automobile mold enterprises and automobile companies should strengthen communication and contact, learn from each other, find problems and solve problems in cooperation, accelerate the pace of development of automobile molds, and make contributions to the revitalization of the national automobile industry.

On the other hand, China is still far from the mold power, and there are many types of molds. It is impossible to catch up with the world advanced level.

Therefore, during the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period, China should seize key enterprises and key products to make breakthroughs, and auto cover molds are one of the breakthroughs. In the automotive panel molds, it is particularly important to increase the investment in the molds of high-end and high-end cars and make efforts to break through certain key technologies.