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Polyurethane Casting Services: Efficient and Flexible Solutions for Precision Manufacturing

31 Jul.,2025

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In the field of plastic parts manufacturing, vacuum casting has become the core technology for small-lot production of polyurethane products by virtue of its high efficiency and rapidity. It is especially suitable for product prototyping, which helps enterprises to complete market testing before mass production. In this article, we will analyze the process, material properties and multiple applications of vacuum casting, revealing its indispensable value in new product development and iteration, helping industry practitioners to grasp this key technology, and promoting the efficient implementation of innovative achievements.

What is vacuum casting?

Vacuum casting, also known as silicone casting or polyurethane casting, is a low-volume replica molding technology based on silicone molds, eliminating air bubbles through a vacuum environment, and accurately replicating prototype parts with liquid resin, which perfectly fills the gap between single-piece production for 3D printing and high-volume production of injection molds.

1.The core process analysis

Vacuum casting to vacuum infusion as the core process, relying on silicone molds to achieve high-precision reproduction. The process contains four key links:

1. Master mold preparation: 3D printing or CNC machining to produce high-precision prototypes, as the basis for mold molding;

2. Silicone mold production: Liquid silicone wrapped master mold, cured and split to form a fractal mold, silicone material's high flexibility can accurately reproduce complex surfaces and textures;

3. Vacuum Infusion: Liquid polyurethane resin is injected into the mold cavities in a vacuum environment, eliminating air bubbles to ensure uniform filling of the material;

4. Curing and demolding: The resin is cured at room temperature or under heating conditions, and the finished product can be delivered after surface treatment after demolding. The precision of this process reaches ±0.05mm, the surface roughness Ra≤0.8μm, without the need for secondary polishing to meet the needs of most products.

Polyurethane Casting Services: Efficient and Flexible Solutions for Precision Manufacturing

Product Prototype

Mold Making

Reproductions

2.Diversified application areas

1. Product development and prototype verification: Rapid production of automotive interior parts, electronic equipment shells and other prototypes to accelerate design iteration;

2. Small batch customized production: Support for 50-100 pieces of orders, applicable to medical customized devices, limited edition toys, cultural and creative hand-do and other scenes;

3. Complex structure manufacturing: Can achieve hollow, thin-walled, precision texture and other traditional processes difficult to complete the design, widely used in aerospace interiors, jewelry models;

4. Material performance testing: Simulate the characteristics of finished products through different formulations of polyurethane, providing data support for injection molding, die casting and other mass production processes.

3.Rich material system

Polyurethane resins can simulate a wide range of engineering plastics performance through the design of multi-faceted formulations, covering the full range of Shore hardness 10A-90D:

- General-purpose resin: Balanced comprehensive performance, used for conventional structural parts (such as brackets, shells);

- High temperature resistant resins: Temperature resistant over 120℃, suitable for engine peripheral parts and industrial equipment parts;

- Transparent resin: Light transmittance > 90%, suitable for optical lenses, lamps and lanterns shell;

- Flexible rubber resin: Shore hardness 10A-40A, commonly used in seals, soft handle;

- Special functional resins: Including flame retardant, conductive, food grade and other materials to meet the needs of niche areas.

4.The core advantages of vacuum casting

Polyurethane vacuum casting through the vacuum environment to achieve three core enhancements:

1. Elimination of air bubble defects: Vacuum infusion effectively exclude the air within the resin to avoid shrinkage, porosity and other problems, to enhance the density and mechanical properties of parts;

2. Enhance the details of the replication: Negative pressure environment to ensure that the resin is fully filled with mold microstructure, complex textures, tiny holes can be completely restored;

3. Enhance material uniformity: Better resin fluidity under vacuum, low shrinkage after curing, and significantly better dimensional stability than atmospheric pressure casting.

Polyurethane casting service provides full-cycle manufacturing support from prototype to mass production with its high efficiency, flexibility and high precision. Whether it is a startup team pursuing rapid validation or a mature enterprise requiring small batch customization, this process can achieve high quality delivery with low cost and short cycle time, making it an important complementary solution for modern manufacturing.

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