Development and application of a large injection mold with conformal cooling channels

Abstract

Reduction of time and production cost is an important issue in a new product development phase, especially for a large die or mold. In this study, a cost-effective approach was proposed to manufacture a large injection mold with conformal cooling channels. This large injection mold (470 mm × 270 mm × 180 mm) is not easy to fabricate using well-known metal additive manufacturing technology, especially for a new product in the research and development phase. The production cost savings up to 83.4% and the cooling time reduction up to 94.7% were obtained. In addition, a new method for producing wax conformal cooling channels was proposed in this study. Characterizations of a large injection mold with built-in three-dimensional cooling channels were also investigated. It was found that the surface roughness of a large injection mold is superior to that of the injection mold fabricated by direct metal printing (DMP) technology. The surface quality of the cooling channel wall inside the large injection mold is superior to that of the injection mold fabricated by DMP technology.