Mold Texture (Mold-Tech)

How much do you think it would cost to texture a piece of plastic with a texture similar to MT-11010 on one side of a piece of PC say about 80mm X 100mm? I got a quote it would be around 95 US bucks so I just want to see if that is about right in your experience.

You are talking about texturing the mold, right? This is a photo-chemical process where you “burn” the texture into the mold, not the part…

At $100 to add texturing to a mold, that sounds really inexpensive…

w

Moldtech costs on average approximately 10% of the tool cost.

Thanks. I think I got a good deal.

As long as it is visually equivalent or close enough we can live with it. I’m not takiing a microscope to it.

You can always try using a spark roughness VDI number - you can get pretty close to Mold Tech but it won’t look quite as nice and wont wear nearly as well… It depends on your budget.

You can also EDM a texture onto a mold (electrical discharge machining). It’s like spark erosion.

lol…There are too many system in china beside MT. but they are not famous enough to be knew by another county people. YS is good, but not the only one.
MT"S technique is not a top secrect to part of chinese setup. The second half of “design-engine” 's sentence is the right answer. Mt’s film is the big secrect, It is hard to have their film we had to copy them by MT flipbook or other way.
80mm X 100mm. 100 dollar!! it is a very good price to some “setup”…
you could get chinese texturing system from chinese factory…They must have this system…
MT’s texcutring is a problem to some samll factory in china…because they usually have chinese texturing system, it is hard to find MT!!!

Just chiming in here, but we’ve never found a tool house unable to accept our YickSang / MoldTech texture specs (yes, we always provide both, we have our sample books marked with each other’s equivalents).

That said, I’ve noticed many more inland Chinese toolmakers requesting YS over the 3-4 other companies competing to become a ‘standard’.

Tip: consider spec’ing areas as ‘polished’…it is an underused and effective texture in itself.

The modelshops in the UK seem to prefer VDI Scale and/or RA scale…

VDI Scale goes from 12 (which is smooth) to 45 (which is more rough)
RA has to do with the size of the bumps that make up the texture. 18 is like Sandpaper and .4 is very smooth

Most people can do their equivalent of MT textures if you spec that though. If you’re friendly with them there’s usually there are urethane casts of the MoldTech texture sample panels floating around that they can give you for next to nothing

I am pretty much seeing “let MT do all the work developing and we will pick the cheapest supplier that copies them pretty well” thing going on here. I am not knocking anybody personally, just the business practice, and it is business.
If I were MT this would suck, if I were trying to make the most money possible it would not. You get what you pay for. I have dealt with MT and their work was exceptional, creating the textures I designed for our products with minimal turn around time.

We’ve had huge issues with suppliers not going to Mold Tech. It’s all fun and games until someone screws up your tool.

VDI specs are an issue if there are any downstream changes that need to happen. Since VDI is done on the EDM when burning the tool, if you need to modify an area later it creates a of issues with getting things lined up correctly, whereas with the process that most MT textures use, you can modify the tool and texture it when finished.

Different country . people like different texture, the good texture is always the key way to have good product.
I am working on the texture COPYER. The texture of mold from different country in inland usually have a directions like: Texture VDI 45 OR MT 11010. that means we have to make the same texture for the customer. But maybe the customer want some different and cool texuture, but we could contract with the product designer, only Obey the orders of toolmakers(mold factory). I just want to say: We could also make and design a COOL texture ,not only copy and copy, but noone knows except ourself.>>>>If the customer want a different texture , if your product was made in china,maybe you should try to have a email with the texture supply
if you want to know any more information about texture ,pls contract with me: alex.woo@live.com

Northern Engraving in WI is a direct competitor and will be willing to talk with you. Just contact Pete and tell him Chevis sent you.


Pete Kambouris
Sales Manager
Wisconsin Engraving Company / UNITEX
New Berlin, WI 53151 - USA
T. 262.786.4521
C. 414.378.6844

http://www.sec-texture.com

For the most part Bart you are dead on.

Whats the difference in VDI and Mold tech?

Im contacting the reseller in singapore and they say it cost $1500 :open_mouth: for Mold-Tech® Visual Texture Standards.
is the price reasonable?

VDI texture is done via the EDM when burning the tool. Mold Tech textures are done after the tool is cut and require a combination of etching, usually with an acid bath or other process.

Mold tech requires more preparation (the tool must be polished, prepared (sometimes by hand, depending on the texture type) and then etched). VDI can be done during the initial tool burn so is cheaper, but it is harder to repair and match if tooling modifications occur.

As far as pricing - it really depends on how big the tool is and what type of texturing they are doing. Also there are a large number of houses that do “Mold Tech” knockoff textures but are not Mold Tech themselves.

what I mean by $1500 is not the tool texturing, its their plaque book texture sample. is the price reasonable?

have anyone heard Yuan Su textures?
are their texture is a standard? Im afraid that if i buy their plaques and ended not using it because no one recognize their code

this is their website mold texture, mold texturing | Yuan Su Mold Texturing LTD

Yick Sang
http://www.yicksangltd.com/

In case you have Keyshot, on Keyshot cloud a library of MT materials is available allowing you to preview a large amount of textures.

Protolabs also provides some free injection molded samples relating to surface finishes.