We have seen various things in our life have various shapes. You’ll find yourself walking with your kid and acquainting them with different types of shapes of things. Have you ever thought about how they get that shape the same for so many pieces of the item? It is unlikely that a person who shares something with his hand can make identical things no matter how great an artist he is. This takes you back to your childhood projects where you would know if someone had used a stencil or not for writing the project heading. I think majorly the letter ‘O’ gives it away because it is so difficult to get the width the same every time. So, you used a stencil to give you identical looking and neat letters. In the same way, to manufacture the same time looking things or to make things of identical shape people use molds. It is just easier if someone does the shape for you.
What are molds?
After a mold is made you can make many identical shaped things from it but initially, the mold has to be built with the rough of the final product you’re trying to obtain or something you need to create from scratch. A hollowed-out substance like wood, silicon or other materials in which pliable material like glass, plastic and ceramic is poured and then allowed to set for a particular amount of time. Then, it comes out looking like the shape of the mold and it’s used in the way it is intended to be used.
There can be different kinds of molds that exist
- The bivalve mold: this is a simple mold having two halves. If our object to be made is like a bilaterally symmetrical object it would need two halves of the mold to make it so that the mold can be pulled apart to release the product from within.
- Articulated mold: articulated mold is molded with different pieces forming a complete mold. If the final object has a complex shape with many areas of overhanging features then this kind of mold comes handy. It is quite an expensive style of mold. This makes it easy to assemble such complex products and they just disassemble the parts of the mold to release the perfectly shaped final product on the inside.
- Piece mold: this is similar to the articulated mold in the way that they also have many molds to piece in parts of the object. This is usually used for molds that cover a segment of a larger final product.
Sum it up
Mold manufacturing is a tedious task in itself. There are different types of ways the manufacturing of molds can be done such as blow molding, extrusion molding, injection molding, rotational molding, matrix molding, spin casting, transfer molding and many other processes of making molds. Molds shape how the final product is going to look like. From a metal doorknob to a yummy cake all become more attractive when they are in the right shape and look great.
