Flow Analysis of Three Plate Family Injection Mould Using Moldflow Software Analysis

Abstract

Flow analysis of three plate family injection mould using pin point gate that consist of four cavities was studied. The responses investigated were volumetric shrinkage, in-cavity residual stress and deflection. The experiment was conducted using Taguchi method with L9 orthogonal array. The parameters involved in this study were mould temperature, melt temperature, injection time and cooling time. The plastic specimens were designed using CATIA V5 and the drawing was imported to Autodesk Moldflow Insight (AMI) simulation software environment. The feed system such as sprue, runner, pin-point gate and cooling system of three plate mould were designed inside the simulation software. Flow analysis was conducted under cool + fill + pack + warp analysis. From the flow analysis using Taguchi method, the lowest volumetric shrinkage obtained is 7.907%. For other responses, the lowest in-cavity residual stress and deflection found are 27.69 MPa and 0.9203 mm respectively. After optimization using optimized parameters, the value of volumetric shrinkage is reduced about 2.88% to 7.678%. In-cavity residual stress is reduced about 0.14% to 27.41 MPa, while deflection of plastic parts is reduced about 0.30% to 0.9176 mm. From ANOVA results, it is found that melt temperature is the most important factors affecting volumetric shrinkage, in-cavity residual stress and deflection of plastic parts.