Abstract
The influence of micro-injection molding process parameters on a molded component’s quality is very prominent. Depending on the functional performance of the part, the desired quality is defined by several criteria which may include dimensional tolerances, shrinkage/warpage, fiber characteristics, and internal defects. A correlation of process parameters with the defined quality attributes needs to be investigated for a new geometrical component. In this work, a micro-component with a new V-shaped geometry is chosen, as this type of geometry finds potential applications in the medical industry. The parts are manufactured with polyoxymethylene resin with a full-factorial design of experimental plan with investigating parameters of mold temperature, melt temperature, injection speed, and packing pressure. The number of internal pores and amount of volumetric shrinkage are identified as the critical quality criteria and the effect of the process parameters is studied with respect to those criteria. The measurement results indicated that the presence of pores is inevitable within the chosen process window; however, the amount can be minimized with careful selection of process settings. Moreover, the statistical analyses demonstrated the significance levels of the process parameters.
Highlights
The ease of replication capabilities makes micro-injection molding process the most preferred manufacturing technology in medical, surgical, automotive, electronics, and aerospace industries [1]
The paper presented a study towards optimization of micro-injection molding process parameters for manufacturing a component with a new V-shaped geometry, since this type of geometrical feature is found in various medical components
Four important processing parameters were investigated with the help of design of experiment approach and the manufacturing parts were measured and analyzed with microfocus X-ray computed tomography
Summary
The ease of replication capabilities makes micro-injection molding process the most preferred manufacturing technology in medical, surgical, automotive, electronics, and aerospace industries [1]. The precision and quality of micro-molded parts are mainly subjected to their geometrical and functional requirements. There have been several studies about application-based optimization of micro-injection molding parameters with respect to different quality criteria, as summarized in [2]. Shrinkage is one of the most important quality aspects for micro-injection molded components and, it has been studied by various researchers. Annicchiarico et al [8,9] implemented a statistical methodology to attempt optimization for both shrinkage and part mass in micro-injection molding. There is a lack of studies or information in the literature related to the effect of processing conditions on the presence of voids or pores in micro-injection molded components
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