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Why is the mold fee for a product so expensive?
It mainly depends on the complexity of your product. Simple products will have cheaper mold costs, while large and complex products will be much more expensive. For example, a simple building block only requires a basic flat mold. A small, simple flat mold without sliders or lifters would cost around 20,000 RMB from design to trial molding. On the other hand, a complex product like a printer is made up of many intricate components, which require complex molds to produce. Such molds involve multiple structures, including sliders, lifters, internal core pulling, front mold ejection, and more.
Excluding product design, the cost of mold making consists of three main stages:
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Mold design (early stage)
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Mold machining and assembly (mid-stage), which includes CNC, EDM, wire cutting, lathe work, grinding, measuring, and assembling
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Trial molding (final stage), after which the mold is approved and ready for mass production.
If you want to reduce costs, the first step is to perfect your product design and consider every detail thoroughly. Why is this important? Because if your initial product design is flawed, it will lead to later product modifications, which in turn will require mold modifications. Any changes to the mold mean new trial runs, and this whole process will significantly increase costs and time. Even a minor design change can take 3 to 5 days to implement.
Once the product design is finalized, you should choose a reliable mold company to build your molds. Why is this necessary? Because a good mold company will help minimize mold costs wherever feasible. For instance, if a good mold maker can get your product fully approved at the first T0 trial with all dimensions correct, it saves you a huge amount of trouble. On the contrary, a poor mold company that repeatedly fails to meet your size requirements will delay your product’s market launch. By the time your product is finally ready, the market may already be saturated. In this business, time is money.