Comparison of cooling simulations of injection moulding tools created with cutting machining and additive manufacturing

Abstract

Nowadays injection moulded products are gaining ground worldwide. The production time of the technology is relatively short, and it can produce thousands of products. The manufacturing speed depends on the injection moulding cycle, which is one of the most time-consuming parts of the cooling time [1]. As a consequence, the primary aim of the manufacturers is to minimize the cooling time within the injection moulding cycle. The aim of the research is to investigate whether the cycle time of an injection moulding can be reduced by using an additive manufacturing instead of traditional machining. MoldEx 3D program was used for the simulation. According to the simulation results, the cooling time has decreased more than 9% for a simple geometry product. The cycle time of complex structures can be decreased significantly with using more efficient cooling system. The dimensional accuracy also improved due to the decrease in warp