Abstract
Plastic injection molding is a versatile process, and a major part of the present plastic manufacturing industry. The traditional die design is limited to straight (drilled) cooling channels, which don’t impart optimal thermal (or thermomechanical) performance. With the advent of additive manufacturing technology, injection molding tools with conformal cooling channels are now possible. However, optimum conformal channels based on thermomechanical performance are not found in the literature. This paper proposes a design methodology to generate optimized design configurations of such channels in plastic injection molds. The design of experiments (DOEs) technique is used to study the effect of the critical design parameters of conformal channels, as well as their cross-section geometries. In addition, designs for the “best” thermomechanical performance are identified. Finally, guidelines for selecting optimum design solutions given the plastic part thickness are provided.
Highlights
Our everyday life is filled with various types of plastic products
Plastic injection molding is a widely used manufacturing process that consumes a large percentage of the total amount of plastics [1]
The effort of identifying a design technique for optimal conformal cooling channels in injection molds has been initiated in recent years by Jahan and Wu et al [37,38,39,40,41,42,43]. This current paper provides a guideline for the mold designers to design their injection molds with the conformal cooling channels that would enable them to obtain the most benefit in business
Summary
Our everyday life is filled with various types of plastic products. Plastic injection molding is a widely used manufacturing process that consumes a large percentage of the total amount of plastics [1]. Preliminary tests demonstrated the technical feasibility of using a solid freeform fabrication process to create low thermal inertia tools [18] Another finite element study was presented by Sun et al for the milled groove insert method for the cooling of plastic injection molds using a household iron plastic part [19]. A number of sets of design of experiments (DOEs) are presented, where thermomechanical analysis is performed on all the design cases in all of the DOEs, and the outcomes are compared to identify the most effective design configuration for the conformal cooling channels This optimization is expected to provide useful insight for mold designers in the plastic injection molding industry
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