How to choose liquid silicone injection moldings for your projects? ----LSR Injection Mold with shut-off Valve VS Liquid Injection Molding without Needle Valve

Liquid Silicone Injection Molding also called as LSR Injection Molding, Silicone Injection Molding, Liquid Silicone Mold, which has two runner systems: Hot Runner System and Cold Runner System. And for Cold Runner System, also have two types: Open-ended liquid silicone injection mold without shut-off valves & needle valves and liquid injection molding with shut-off valves.

Liquid Silicon Injection Mold without shut-off valve, similar to edge-injection gate plastic injection mold, cooling the material runner system, while heating the mold core to cure silicone material into products. Because liquid silicone & LSR products by silicone injection molding without shut-off valves will have big injection gate mark or flow mark on the products, this type of molded method is mainly suitable for big LSR silicon parts like baby feeding bottle, silicone baby nipples, products without high size and designs tolerance requirement and low-volume liquid silicone products.

What's the advantages of Silicone Injection Molding without shut-off valves?

• Lower molding cost. Reducing total cost of project is more competitive.
  

• It's a good chioce for prototyping liquid silicone product. For customers only need some prototypes to check and test product design and structure, LSR Mold without shut-off valves save mold cost.

• Suitable for products that key point is not on size tolerance; such as babycare products: silicone baby nipples, silicone baby bottles, silicone baby spoon.

• Recycle liquid silicone mold base
  

Disadvantages of LSR Injection Molding without shut-off valves:

• Material Waste. Without the needle valve to control the material, material will overflow, casting issue occurs.

• Material will be solidified in cold nozzle and difflerent to clean the mold.

• Liquid silicone rubber material will leave on the runner after picking out the waste cured material.

• Difficult to control the amount of material injection, so that it's difficult to control products quality. Will have large mark on the products
  

• Not suitable for high tolerance required products.

• Products size and design is unstable. Will leave large marks on the product.
  

Silicone Injection Molding with Needle Valves. When using valve gate nozzles, the needle tip as such forms part of the shaping cavity that can be adjusted to any surface, leading to a perfect gate point in the produced part. So liquid silicone rubber injection molding with needle valve, can control the materail dosage well, in other word, can make sure the exact amount of material to make sure the parts with no or less flashing and with very good parting line.

Liquid Silicone Mold with Shut-off Valves' Advantages:

Liquid Silicone Moldled parts with less than 0. 1 mm silicone rubber flashing, and some even do not have rubber flashings.

LSR Molded parts have good parting line and stable design and can achieve strict tolerance.

Needlve Valves have good control of the materials into the cavities, avoid material waste.

Easier to clean mold and suitable for mass production.

LSR Silicon Injection mold with shut-off valves' Disadvantages:

Liquid silicon mold with needle valves' disadvantage is expensive. The cost for one needle valve is about 500-800 USD, and for large cavity molds usually need more than 4 needle valves to control the cavities. So the mold cost is much higher than the LSR Mold without shut-off valves. Shut-off valve(needle valve) is the main reason why the price difference is so large between liquid silicone injection moldings.

Conclusion: To choose a suitable and cost effective liquid silicone injection mold mainly based on the design/structure of your product, and your requirement about the liquid silicon parts' size, tolerance, and also the quantity for your project. Xiamen Better Silicone Rubber Co,Ltd can provide free design analysis and manufacturability of your projects; our experienced engineers and production team will provide a good advice on the moldings that fit your project best to save the cost for you. Feel free to contact us if you have any plans and ideas on your liquid silicone LSR projects. admin@better-silicone.com