Liquid Silicone Rubber Different Forming Ways

There are 3 types of ways to molded a liquid silicone rubber parts.

Liquid Silicone Rubber molding Prototyping. This is the simplest and  fastest way to mold a Liquid Silicone part. Only need to pour liquid silicone rubber into the prototype tool. But it only suits for a very small quantity low volume parts. Some customers want to have a rough sample, they will choose this forming way. Usually, we suggest customers to choose this forming way for a complete new project before launch the project. Because this is timing and money saving. We can have a test and evaluate of the sample first and then decide to start the new project directly or need to improve the design.

Cheap LSR molding (Solid Liquid Convert Mold) similar to silicone compression molding,which is a simplified liquid silicone rubber injection molding, combining the compression molding and liquid silicone rubber molding. Actually it’s a compression mold with a cooling plate and with runner and injection gate. Soften the solid silicone into fluid silicone and then the fluid silicone can be injected into the runner. Do not need to place the solid silicone material one by one like compression molding.

Solid Liquid Convert Mold's Advantages compared to compression mold:

Higher efficiency. Don't need to place material manually.

Short cycle time. Fluid silicone can be cured shortly.

High precision and with smaller parting line and rubber flashing.

More Suitable for large and cylindrical products, such as silicone bottle sleeve. Becaus the mold core of compression mold will be bend easily if the material is too heavy. So we suggest to choose this kind of simplified LSR Mold ( Solid Liquid Convert Mold) for the large and cylindrical parts.

Solid Liquid Convert Mold's disadvantages compared to compression mold:

Material waste. Will have a lot of waste material on the plate.

Difficult to test many color. Because it's hard to clean the runner system easily.

For compression mold, just need to mix the color directly, can mold to different kinds of colors easily.

Cheap LSR molding Disadvantages compared to Formal LSR Injection Mold:

Do not with high precision and the parting line and rubber flashing is large.It’s not suitable for the products need high tolerance and precision demands.

The mold life cycle (about 5000 shots) is  much lower than LSR Injection Molding (300,000 shots)

Waste material.

Lower production efficiency. Still need to demold manually can't achieve production automatically.

Formal Liquid Silicone Rubber Injection Molding, the most precision and high quality and efficiency forming method, which has becoming more and more popular in medical and baby care areas.

With long mold cycle time

High precision

High Efficiency (production automatively)