High-Pressure Die-Cast Mold for Industrial Camera Housing

Challenge

A German machine vision company needed a high-pressure die-casting mold for an IP67-rated industrial camera housing. The part — measuring 280 × 180 × 80 mm in aluminum A380 — required near-zero porosity in the lens mount area, flatness within 0.05mm across the 300mm diagonal, and a durable mold capable of 150,000+ shots. European HPDC mold makers quoted €65,000-80,000 with 14-week lead times.

What We Did

• Gating and flow analysis: Our factory partner ran mold flow simulation to optimize gate location and size, ensuring complete cavity fill without turbulence that causes porosity. The lens mount area — the most critical surface — was positioned for laminar flow with a dedicated overflow well to trap gas.
• Cooling design: Conformal cooling lines in the core and cavity, fed by a high-flow temperature control unit, maintained uniform die temperature within ±5°C across the entire cavity. This was essential for the 0.05mm flatness requirement across the 300mm span.
• H13 with nitriding: H13 hot-work steel with a gas nitriding surface treatment (0.15mm case depth, 900-1,000 HV surface hardness) provides resistance to the thermal fatigue and aluminum soldering that destroy untreated H13 in HPDC service. This is standard on our die-casting molds for aluminum.
• QC and validation: T0 samples were measured on CMM with a full dimensional report. X-ray inspection confirmed porosity below 0.5% in all critical areas. The lens mount surface showed less than 0.03mm deviation from nominal — well within the 0.05mm spec.

Results

Customer Feedback

"The mold flow analysis identified a gate position that our own team had not considered. The porosity results in the lens mount exceeded our quality requirements. We have since ordered three additional molds from Peifeng for different housing variants."