A Study on Resin Flow to Make a Replica Using a Silicone Mold

The replica of silicone mold which can produce the test samples and the market-displayable products without making expensive metallic patterns is advantageous because it incurs less cost than the ordinary method that manufactures the products from the metallic patterns. However, the production of the products using silicone mold should require a technician with professional knowledge about the metallic patterns every time. Thus we tried to judge whether a forming analysis software for iron molding can be applied to silicon molding in this paper. In other words, this paper suggests a method to use a computer simulator from the designing step of the silicone mold, which is the most important part in making replica using simple silicone molds to the step of pouring the cast. The paper shows that if the know-how of a professional worker is provided in advance, an amateur worker can easily produce silicone molds of the best quality, the defective rate of the products will be decreased, and the replica will have a more complete status. By doing so, we suggested a possibility for reducing the delivery time at the production sites and for improving the product quality.