Do You Know How Many Processes In Vacuum Forming Factory?

by Amy

Brief Introduction About Ditaiplastic

Dongguan Ditai Plastic Products Co., Ltd. since 1997 and is one of the largest vacuum forming/thermoforming processing factories in China. The founder, Mr. Zou Dehong, is a pioneer in China’s domestic vacuum forming industry with over 30 years of relevant experience. Since our establishment, we have developed steadily step by step. In the early days of our business, Skyworth TV cooperated with us because they urgently needed to reduce the development cost and shorten the cycle time of development of new series, and Mr. Zou Dehong proposed a solution and provided all services that met Skyworth’s expectations, which was the first time a vacuum forming process was used for TV fields. In 2017, Ditai became the only high-tech enterprise in the vacuum forming industry and started cooperation with Hisense Group. 2019, Ditai passed the audit of the world famous brand Louis Vuitton and manufacture the LV global store windows in the first quarter of 2020. So far, we have maintained stable cooperation. We also have long term relationship with many famous brands such as Hennessy, Tiffany&Co, KTC, BOSE, WISTRON, VINFAST, BACARDI, etc. Kindly visit us at: https://www.ditaiplastic.com Mail: amy@dgdtxs.com.cn (click to sent us email) WhatsApp: +86 13825780422 (click to open whatsapp)

From the beginning of independent research and development of patented products to now, Ditai has successfully owned more than 40 industry patents, including the patent of vacuum forming technology, and many of our self-developed products. It is worth mentioning that one of the military equipment in the parade ceremony for the 70th anniversary of China’s founding was designed and created by DItai, and was also awarded the honorary certificate of great contribution.

All The Processes In Vacuum Forming

Extrusion plastic sheet

As mentioned earlier we are one of the largest vacuum forming processing factories in China, which can be reflected in the fact that we have a factory covering 12,000 square meters with over 60 processing machines. First of all, we have two complete extrusion sheet production lines. Unlike injection and rotomolding, the vacuum forming process requires the use of sheet material. The advantage of having our own production lines is that we can control the quality from the source and shorten the production time to a great extent, and we can also give different characteristics to the sheets by adding different nature of raw material particles, so as to meet the customer’s needs for product properties more perfectly. Depending on the customer’s requirements, the sheets can be flame retardant, UV resistant, impact resistant, corrosion resistant, textured on the surface or both sides, colored, and can be selected as single-layer or composite board or capped sheet. For your information, like two layers of ASA with a layer of ABS in the middle, such as ASA-ABS-ASA, we call it a composite board. Like there is a layer of ASA covering the surface of ABS, we call it ASA capped ABS .

Molding/Tooling

There are two major raw materials needed for vacuum forming, one of them is plastic sheet material, and the other raw material is mold. We also have our own machines for making molds. Two CNC machines for molds with a director of the mold department who has 25 years of experience, and three experienced masters are make up our tooling/molding department. Here are some tips for choosing the molds.When we receive your inquiry, firstly, we will need to know the application of the product, generally the raw material of all our molds is aluminum. Then can suggest the material of mold which can be casting or block aluminum, Casting aluminum can be cheaper, and it is used for solid color products, which it won’t see the dust and vacuum holes on the product’s surface, Block aluminum mold will do mirror polish, make the mold surface shiny and smooth, then it hard to attach the dust and no casting holes, so usually transparent products will need block aluminum molds, these two kinds of molds won’t make dimension and shape difference, just suitable for different materials; Secondly, our mold engineers will convert the 3D drawing into mold drawing based on the material shrink, and use the right type of aluminum material for mold engraving, after engraving, we will make air holes and polish the mold surface to avoid negative impacts on the product surface. To make a perfect plastic product, one of the necessary conditions is having a perfect mold. Having our own CNC mold machine, we can control the mold very well from quality, cost to production time. The durability of the tooling is much better. In fact, there have been tools run for more than 10 years. So don’t worry about the tool will be broken, if the tool happens to be damaged, we will make a new one for free.

Vacuum Forming ( Thermoforming)

After the sheet and the mold, the most important part is the vacuum forming. Vacuum forming is the process of manufacturing a flat sheet into a 3D shape product. The principle is to install the mold inside the semi-automatic machine and put a flat plastic sheet above the mold for heating and melting, after which the machine will automatically lift the mold and the heated sheet will fit well on surface of the mold. Then we will extract out the extra air between the mold and the sheet through the vacuum pump after formed a vacuum environment,making the plastic attached the mold tightly, and then the cooling device above the machine will help the product to be better shaped and not easy out of shape when releasing the mold. Speaking of mold releasing, there is actually a little fun fact. When some products for some necessary reasons will have some under-cut deconstruction, these kinds of products after the shaped can’t release of the mold, so when the product has under-cut,Usually,in the production of the mold will make a sliding aluminum block, During forming,for this under-cut part, the aluminum block slide out of the forming,and it can slide into the collection, when the products relasing the mold. We also use upper molds or auxiliary molding tools and some products that require bulge technology. One of them are used for products with high heights, which require a large stretching range and are difficult to achieve with normal vacuum fomring needs, so we make a upper mold that is lowered from the top of the sheet to help shape it better. Another kind is used in some products with more than one side or right-angle side or products with small draft angle, its purpose is to reduce the shrinking marks caused by the violent shrinkage of the material, or to solve the problem of the thickness deviation of the product at different positions due to the stacking of the material, the thickness can be more uniform. We have 16 sets of large vacuum forming machines, the maximum forming dimension can reach 4000*2000*1000mm, which is currently the largest vacuum forming machines in Guangdong. We are proud of the number of machines, our experience in vacuum forming, our control of temperature, the quality of the molded product, and the size of the formed dimensions.

CNC Cutting

Next, let’s talk about CNC cutting machines. After the vacuum forming process is completed, the cutting machines are used to remove the extra edges from the outside of the product, and the drilling and beveled edge processing of the product is also done in this step. Ditai has 28 CNC cutting machines, 16 sets of which are 5-axis CNC. The current circulation of cutting machines, one is a 3-axis cutting machine, the other is a 5-axis cutting machine. 3 axis cutting machines are used for cutting flat or simple curved surfaces, while 5-axis machines have 360° high speed rotating robot arms for cutting products with more angles and curved surfaces. It is the most advanced machine for cutting. Usually our CNC engineers type in the program and the machine will automatically operate to cut the shape of the product. We also have our own experience to maintain the accuracy of cutting products. Take the 5-axis machine as an example, when we use the 5-axis CNC processing cutting products before, we will make a mold with wood, the surface shape of this mold will fit with the shape of the product, at the same time this mold we will drill holes and will embed one side of magnets on the surface of the mold, during the cutting process, the vacuum pump will extract the air between the mold and the product through the air holes on the top of the mold, the magnets will also be placed on the The magnets will be placed on the surface of the product, and through the suction between the magnets and the suction of the vacuum pump, the product will be firmly attached to the mold, which is used to ensure that the size of the product is cut accurately.

After Treatment In Vacuum Forming

When all this is done, our products will do the edge scraping in the post-processing department to remove the burrs that prevent the sharp edges from scratching the skin. After some simple products are finished scraping the edges, our quality inspection department will check the color, thickness, and size, and then we can start packaging. Some other products need to do other processing, such as assembly, silk-screening, painting, etc., which then requires the cooperation of the assembly department and the painting department.

painting department

At the beginning of 2018, Ditai added a painting department, equipped with three perfect production workshops, which can provide professional silk screening and painting to meet customers with high requirements for product surface, and can also control the quality of painting and silk screening well. As the matter of fact, spray painting is a process we often use for plastic surface treatment.that fit for some situation as below. Firstly, when you need a small number of products but have requirements on the color of the product, it can be replaced by spray painting. It is worth mentioning that the spray paint can be PU paint. Such paint is generally sprayed on the surface of the car, which can effectively prevent the product from scratching and hard to fade. Secondly , vacuum forming process on the shape of the product do have some certain requirements, for instance , when the height of the product is too high, then when doing the vacuum forming is easy to have shrink mark, spray paint can cover this kind of defect after polished the mark. Or when the finished product needs polished and assembly, it can ensure a consistent appearance and make the product look way more beautiful.

Ultimatly , you can also use the painting process to make the plastic look like other materials, for example,spraying matte paint can make the plastic looks like plaster or ceramic, or other materials you want, such as silk, metal, etc., so that your products can have the characteristics of plastic and at the same time have the appearance of other materials.There is also an advantage, the spray paint can have a gradient effect, which can make the product more closely match the actual, look particularly realistic.

After the spray paint, let’s talk about the assembly. In recent years, most of the shells of some high-tech products are made by vacuum forming process, like robot shells, drone shells, and some medical technology products’ shells and so on. If you have free time, we hope you can come to our factory to see some of the samples we made, and you will be surprised by the visual feast brought by vacuum forming plus assembly plus painting.

In addition to these supporting facilities, Ditai is also equipped with some auxiliary machines, such as plate heating machines, some bending products can be made using heating machines; such as acrylic laser cutting machines, you can directly to the processing of acrylic plates; and a variety of testing machines, can be professional test thickness test color test flame retardancy. In other words, Ditai has a complete set of machine system, from the source to control the quality, cost and delivery time.

Today, vacuum forming products have been used in various industries, such as plastic parts for modified cars, 3D wall panels, machine housings, trays for industrial agriculture, medical plastic parts, decorative advertising plastic parts, etc. And if you have plastic project, I’m sure we can meet all your expectation.