Thermal staking tooling, means the tooling for thermoplastic heat riveting, is an essential equipment to realize assembly by thermal staking. Heat staking tooling is designed according to work-pieces design. The cost of tooling depends on work-pieces measurement, geometric design and no of staking points as well as heater design.

by Alex.Lee from MP Sonic, Mob:+86-15918523336， Email:[email protected]

What does a set of thermal staking tooling content:

1. Upper tooling including heaters, staking tips, adjustment mechanism, pre-fit mechanism, cooling blowers, etc;
2. Lower tooling, means base fixture, including jig nest, base plate, and auxiliary system such as clamps, sensors, vacuum system, sliders, etc;
3. Others auxiliary parts such as dwell, connection of electric or air.

What is the material of heat staking tip? And why?

The most applied material is copper or bronze, for long duration under high temperature.

What normally need to do staking tip after machining？ And why?

Normally need to do coating or polishing treatment for reduce or avoid sticking by molten thermoplastic material.

How is the heating design?

There are two types heating design:

1. Independent Design, in which each staking designed with a single heater and thermocouple and well as independent adjustment. This kind we design is suitable for staking stud (boss) in big size and big distance between staking points;
2. Heater-shared Design, in which two or more staking points (staking tips) share one heating block. In this design, staking tips for different points designed on one block made of copper or bronze, electrical heaters is installed in the block and heats it to keep high temperature by which high temperature is transmitted to staking tip to work on plastic boss (stud) to melt material and realize staking. This kind of design is mostly suitable for staking is small size or staking points in short distance.

What affects the cost of heating staking tooling?

The most factors affecting the manufacturing cost including:

1. The no of staking tips: under the same condition, the welding more staking points, the higher is the cost;
2. The measurement of work-pieces: under the same condition, the larger size, the more cost in material and machining cost;
3. The geometrical shape of work-pieces: the complexity dictates the machining method and design / machining / assembly job volume, thus under the same condition, the more complexity, the high cost in design & machining.
4. The machine control design: staking tooling is applied on staking machine, which requests tooling to be designed to co-work with machine, thus the control system of machine master the relative connection, installation, operation, etc, of tooling, which will affect tooling cost much.
5. Customer special requirement: the equipment standard of users as well as their requirement in operation such as the selection of brands/specification of elements & material or others design such as auxiliary function design will case much difference in manufacturing cost of tooling.

What should we consider else when we decide to apply staking tooling?

The storage and change-over operation of staking tooling. To minimize the space storing tooling and the time of tooling change-over, aiming reduce cost and increase efficiency, it is necessary to consider the storage and tooling-over by management. Normally, small staking tooling is stored sharing with others tooling rack or space, and no need ancillary equipment for changing-over, while it requests design tooling rack or trolley for the storage & changing-over.