| Summary: | Plastic injection moulding is a commonly used process for the production of low-cost plastic parts in large numbers but for high-end products this process is hard to handle and expensive. The quality of the moulded parts is directly dependent on the surface quality of the mould Therefore, typically ultra-precision techniques like diamond turning or milling with a subsequent polishing, are used to generate a high quality surface finish. Ultra-precision techniques cannot process steel surfaces, thus nickel plating on the surface is required. The coating of the surface is an additional process step which also leads to lifetime issues, such as peeling or micro cracks. That is why many mould makers want to avoid this step as well as expensive ultra-precision techniques. The target of this work was to reduce the process chain for mould manufacturing from 5 to 3 process steps. Expensive and difficult process steps like diamond turning and manual polishing should be replaced by robot polishing of the steel mould The last process step before moulding is manual polishing. This step requires skilled experts and is velY time-consuming. These experienced specialists are very rare and few young people want to pursue this profession. Another big problem is the medical aspect; the manual polishing process requires a lot of physical strength and therefore is really exhausting for joints like elbow and shoulder. For these reasons manual polishing should be substituted by automated robot polishing. Existing processes have been further developed and extended by new processes. The goal was a stable, easy to handle robot polishing process. The Development
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