Current Status and Prospects of Automobile Body Panel Dies in China

Qiu Shaohu, Chief Engineer, Fangyuan Machinery Co., Ltd., Suqian City, Jiangsu Province

In a macro sense, automotive molds are a general term for parts molds throughout the car, such as injection molds, stamping dies, and forging dies. The automobile cover refers to the automobile parts that constitute the surface of the automobile body or the cab, the surface of the shaped body covering the engine and the chassis, and the inside. Car cover with engine cover, roof cover, left and right side panels, front and rear doors, front, rear, left and right fenders, trunk cover, engine front support plate, engine front apron, front Frame, front fender, wheel fender, rear panel, luggage compartment cover, rear enclosure, top cover, front panel, front panel, front cowl, front fender and engine Cover, etc.

The car cover is both a decorative part and a closed shell-shaped force part. Any tiny defects on the surface of the cover will cause diffuse reflection of light after painting and damage the appearance of the appearance. Therefore, the surface of the cover is not allowed to have ripples, wrinkles, edge marks and other defects that damage the surface aesthetics. The accuracy requirements for this mold are quite high.

Nowadays, with the improvement of people's cognition level of things, users' requirements for molds are becoming more and more demanding. The cars with high precision, high quality, low price, short delivery time and long service life can satisfy users. It is a big problem to ask how to produce the best quality products at the cheapest cost in a short period of time.

Compared with other developed countries, the CAD/CAE/CAM technology used in mold design and production in most domestic automobile industries is not perfect, and there is no integrated connection between design and production. Enterprises do not have a set of three-dimensional software applications, summed up a set of solutions and ideas that truly belong to the company. They can only follow the successful cases abroad and cross the river by feeling the stones. However, the difference and uniqueness of the mold structure make it necessary for designers to complete the design according to the same design process when facing the same kind of mold design, so the efficiency of mold design is always unsatisfactory. With the continuous development and advancement of science and technology, many discipline technologies such as concurrent engineering, artificial intelligence technology, parametric modeling and related design are continuously linked to the modeling industry. The increasing degree of specialization of mold CAD/CAE/CAM, the initial CAD/CAE/CAM network integrated system structure, the eye-catching mold intelligent technology, and advanced manufacturing technology all mark the new CAD/CAE/CAM. The system is developing in four aspects: specialization, artificial intelligence, networking and integration.

However, the domestic mold production technology is low in content, and almost all of the high-end car molds and precision blanking molds are dependent on imports. The gap between China's mold production technology and the international advanced level is mainly:

(1) The overall strength of the mold enterprise is weak and the degree of specialization is not high. Because most of China's automobile mold enterprises belong to the major automobile groups, and they are afraid of the leakage of technical data of new models, it has largely restricted the technical exchanges between mold companies, thus affecting the technological development and progress of the entire mold enterprise.

Mold production enterprises serve the automobile group in an all-round way, making it difficult to form their own professional skills in certain aspects, and their professional knowledge accumulation is also very difficult.

(2) Insufficient computer application technology. Even if each company has basic large 3D CAD/CAE/CAM software, due to factors such as personnel quality, habits and design efficiency, the current design cannot realize three-dimensionality in practical sense, and the exploration and practical experience of three-dimensional exploration and The actual requirements are even more different.

(3) The actual experience, data and data accumulation of mold design and production are low, and there is a lack of reasonable and effective cumulative measures.

In order to realize the auto-body cover molds in China, it is necessary to develop a corresponding high-efficiency software platform by reducing the trial cycle and production cost. Most enterprises can use UG as the platform, use the relevant modules and secondary development functions, develop a modeling framework based on UG automotive mold design, integrate the modeling simulation technology, and design the 3D solid structure of the cover mold. optimization.