Study and analysis of process parameters for silicone rubber mold

Abstract

Time and expense are two main key issues that are needed to develop a new product. Silicone rubber mold is one of the most commonly used techniques in the rapid tooling technology. As product life cycles are getting shorter, it is important to shorten product development time and costs, and rapid introduction of new products. Thus, enhancing the efficiency of making silicone rubber molds become an important research direction. The silicone rubber mold process parameters were investigated experimentally in this study. The results showed that the weight ratio of base compound and hardener 10:1 is the optimum ratio because the curing time of silicone rubber mold can be shortened significantly. In addition, 40 – 50 °C is the optimum range of curing temperature because of the shorter curing time of silicone rubber mold and 5 % shrinkage of the inner dimensions of the silicone rubber mold.