Diamond-like Carbon hard at work to raise mould productivity

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Diamond-like Carbon used for demoulding

While all moving parts such as slides, guide pins, ejectors in Formteknik’s moulds are DLC coated, the cavity surface itself is not. Here alternative coatings such as chrome nitride are used. With one exemption, as Jørgensen explains. “For one application, a small but long tube, we use DLC-coating to achieve the opposite effect. Due to the DLC surface structure and parts shrinkage behaviour, the part used to stick in the outer mould part, not on the core, which made demoulding easier. Here, DLC showed a relatively good adhesion to the polymer, so that the core of the mould was coated to make the injection moulded part stay on the core.”

High production volumes of 500 million units per year means multi-cavity moulds - single or twin component moulds of 48, 64, 72 and 96 cavities for caps and closures, or from typically 16 up to 64 cavities for more complex medical parts. In addition, moulds and production cells need to be integrated. Formteknik’s customers are often end-users who don’t produce themselves, but the majority of parts are sourced simultaneously from more than one external contract manufacturer, running the exact same equipment setup supplied by Formteknik.

Formteknik uses a number of individual components treated with different coating systems including DLC coating. “But to be able to buy different DLC-coated standardised parts from Hasco is helpful,” says Jørgensen. Otherwise, the company would have to send these parts to a coating company first, posing the additional problem that a coating has a certain thickness that has to be considered in the size of the uncoated part. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Hasco parts. Jørgensen claims cost savings of more than 50% when using DLC-coated standard parts compared to designing them in house with a certain undersize, manufacturing them and having them coated elsewhere. “This reduces the lead time and the size of our spare parts warehouses as well as the tied-up capital,” he says.

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