Plastic Injection Mould Design Research Articles

Analysis of Plastic Injection Mold Design and Cooling System

Plastik malzeme, otomotivden beyaz eşyaya, kırtasiye malzemelerinden oyuncaklara, mutfak eşyalarından ofis malzemelerine kadar her sektörde yerini almıştır. Plastik enjeksiyon yöntemi, plastik parça üretiminde en çok kullanılan imalat yöntemidir. Üretimi talep edilen plastik malzemeler için, plastik enjeksiyon kalıpları tasarlanmaktadır. Bu kalıplar tasarlanırken, ilk aşamada ürün tasarımı göz önüne alınır. Üretime uygun, kısa sürede ve kaliteli bir imalat yapmak için en önemli faktör tasarlanan ürünün, üretilebilir olmasıdır.
 Bu çalışmada plastik bir kırtasiye-oyuncak sektörü diyebileceğimiz bir sulu boya paletinin ürün tasarımı ve kalıp tasarımı aşama aşama incelenecektir. Ürün, kalıplamaya uygun hale getirilip, kalıp tasarımı gerçekleştirilmiştir. Tasarımı biten ürün, daha üretimi yapılmadan yolluk ve soğutma sistemlerinde karşımıza çıkabilecek olası hataları gözlemlenmiştir. Yapılan analize göre yolluk giriş yerinin en iyi ürün merkezinden olacağı ama maliyeti arttırdığı tespit edilip soğuk yolluk sistemi kullanılarak bir tasarım gerçekleştirilmiştir. Hava birikecek yerler tespit edilmiştir, bu bölgelere hava çıkışını sağlayacak cepler kullanılması önerilmiştir. Soğutma kalitesiyle ilgili yapılan analiz ile ürünün et kalınlığının homojen olduğu ve erken donma ihtimalinin düşük olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu yüzden et kalınlığına müdahale edilmesine gerek görülmemiştir.

Design of an Arc-Core Moving Mechanism for Injection Molding Using a Link and Cam Mechanism

A novel plastic injection mold design for a product with a deep arc-hole based on the kinematic analysis is proposed. To move the wide angle arc-core, a hybrid mechanism combining a slider-crank and a swing cam is designed. The force transmission coefficient of the slider-crank and the pressure angle of the swing cam are used to evaluate the dimensions of the mechanism. The motion of the designed mechanism was confirmed by using a prototype made with a 3D printer.

Design of Plastic Injection Mould for Plastic Bracket

The side core pulling mechanism of “fixed mold lifer+T-type lift guide block” is adopted for the fixed mold of bracket, and the side core pulling mechanism of “angle pin+slide” and “angle pin+slide+T-type guide block” side core pulling mechanism is adopted for the movable mold of bracket. The gating system adopts the sub gate, the inner reinforcing rib is formed by moving mold insert, and the ejection system is the form of ejector pin+blade ejector pin. It provides a good reference for the design of similar moulds.

Heat transfer simulation for decision making in plastic injection mold design

Abstract The solidification of a thermoplastic during the injection process directly influences the productivity and quality of the final product. This paper presents a study of the solidification performance of parts produced by a thermoplastic injection process, verifying their dimensional, visual, and production behavior according to the variation of geometry, temperature, and design of the injection mold cooling system. SolidWorks Plastics® software was used to perform the simulations. Experiments were performed with a plastic injection mold to confront and validate the simulations. Given the comparison of different cooling geometries, the simulations made it possible to obtain parts with a shorter mold cooling cycle time. Payback analysis has the primary objective of determining which cooling system is the most viable and has the highest return on invested capital. The results demonstrated a solution for engineers and designers to justify maintenance or modifications to existing injection molds through numerical simulation.

Polymer Injection Molding: Advanced Simulations or Tablet Computations

Simulation of injection molding of polymeric materials is a common way of solving issues in plastic part and injection mold design. CAE software is getting more available and user-friendly, which sometimes leads to unreasonable use cases of these programs. The original, relatively simple tool has been introduced to validate runner systems in injection molds. It allows a fast identification of the most important design parameters of runner system. This tool does not require any support of FEM simulations, but results obtained from it have been successfully compared with injection molding simulations.

Designing an Injection Mould Using Advance CAD-CAM Programs

This paper presents the design of plastic injection mould for producing a plastic product. The plastic part was designed into two different types of product, but in the same usage function. The mould was designed using the CAD program ProEngeneering Wildfire 3.0 and the DepoCam software was used to simulate the manufacturing time. The execution of the mould and the experiments were done at a private factory. Designing and simulating an injection mould before actually producing it is very useful in order to save time and cut manufacturing costs

Design and Analysis of Plastic Injection Mould for CAM BUSH with Submarine Gate

This Paper focused on Design and Analysis of an automatic plastic injection mould for production of CAM BUSH. Cam Bush is used as a indexing device in ON/OFF Load Tap changer device of high voltage transformer and serves as the connector between the indexing head and the power changing gears. An injection mould is a tool which is used for production of plastic components in large numbers in a short span of time. Modeling in done by using Unigraphics (NX 7.5) and Auto Desk Mould flow Plastic Insight is use for Mould flow Analysis for CAM BUSH filling rate, cooling system location and Location of submarine gate. The moulding tool consists of the Top plate, Cavity plate, Core plate, Spacer blocks, Ejector plate and the Bottom plate. In this six core pins and six ejector pins are provided on injection mould because the required cam bush has six indexing holes. The material use is Oil Hardened Non-shrinking Steel (OHNS) for the core and cavity, and EN353 for the Tie Rod, guide bushes, core pins, ejector pins, locator ring and the sprue bush and Mild Steel for other plates are selected. The elements of injection moulding tool has designed and analyzed. Submarine gate and Baffle circular hole cooling system has provided in the moulding tool to increase the productivity and good surface finish. The required Nylon-66 Cam bush component will produced with this moulding tool with the various parameters of injection moulding machine.

DESIGN OF ‘PLASTIC INJECTION MOLD’ FOR AN ‘AIR VENT BEZEL’ THROUGH FLOW ANALYSIS (CAE) FOR DESIGN ENHANCEMENT

Designer's of plastic injection Molds need to study from this point of view, the type of Mold to be designed, the physical Mold orientation, the dimensions for each of the element in the Mold, the location of the gate, runner, requirement of insert, draft angle requirement, shrinkage factor, location of cooling channels. Design can also be simplified by using standardized parts of the mold such as ejector pins. By eliminating the obstruction to smooth flow of plastic a good of quality component can be achieved. The effort of this thesis work is to find out the nuances in the Plastic Injection Mold Design while borrowing the inputs from the Flow Analysis (CAE) conducted for the 'Air vent bezel' to study the behavior of the Melt during flow. The Mold Design would

CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF INJECTION MOULD TOOL FOR MAIN BODY PART OF AN AIR INFLATOR

This paper presents the conceptual design of plastic injection mould for Main body of an air inflator, which is used for air filling in the dunnage bags. The fundamental aim of the designer is to achieve balance between productivity and design, by optimizing the design, process and manufacturing parameters, which results in the final cost reduction of the mouldings without compromising the quality of the product. The various parameters like processing temperature, pressure, melt velocity, filling time, moulding material, parting line selection, feed system, mould cooling, ejection system, etc. affects the design of mould and its functions with variation in cost and quality for producing optimized quality mouldings. By varying some of the above said parameters an effort is made to attain a cost effective conceptual design. The suggested material for Main body of an air inflator is polyamide 66. Designing of mould is carried out by using computer aided designing software Unigraphic.

CONFIGURING SPRUE CONDUIT EXPANSION IN PLASTIC INJECTION MOULD DESIGN

Plastic injection mould design methodology and criteria to configure sprue bush for augmenting functionality are briefly compiled. Hereto prevalent sprue conduit design criteria is systematically consolidated and its sensitivity to machine, moulding and material influences are quantitatively ghettoised as expansion ratio on the basis of ubiquitous empirical relationships. This generic, simple, inexpensive preventive criterion exemplifies sprue bush conduit geometry design to inject melt specifically for a particular combination. Further for design meticulousness its sensitivity is also briefly deliberated over a feasible range to achieve best performance.

The use of Taguchi method in the design of plastic injection mould for reducing warpage

Plastic injection moulding is one of the most important polymer processing operations in the plastic industry today. However, lack of skill in mould making and injection moulding machine control will lead to defective plastic product. Warpage is one type of defect that usually appears in products with thickness less than 1 mm. This project is going to fabricate a mould that produced a thin plate with dimension 120 mm × 50 mm × 1 mm. The thin plate will be used for warpage testing. In mould fabrication, the mould base that purchase will be machined and assembled. After that, the mould is fixed on the injection moulding machine. The machine setting should be made to produce the product. Then, the product will be used for testing on the effective factors in warpage problem by applying the experimental design of Taguchi method. From the results, it shows that the most effective factor on the warpage is melt temperature. The filling time only slightly influenced on the warpage. The optimum parameters that can minimize the warpage defect are melt temperature (240 °C), filling time (0.5 s), packing pressure (90%) and packing time (0.6 s).

A scaffolding architecture for conformal cooling design in rapid plastic injection moulding

Cooling design of plastic injection mould is important because it not only affects part quality but also the injection moulding cycle time. Traditional injection mould cooling layout is based on a conventional machining process. As the conventional drilling method limits the geometric complexity of the cooling layout, the mobility of cooling fluid within the injection mould is confined. Advanced rapid tooling technologies based on solid freeform fabrications have been exploited to provide a time-effective solution for low-volume production. In addition, research has made attempts to incorporate conformal cooling channel in different rapid tooling technologies. However, the cooling performance does not meet the mould engineer’s expectations. This paper proposes a novel scaffold cooling for the design of a more conformal and hence more uniform cooling channel. CAD model for constructing the scaffolding structure is examined and cooling performances are validated by computer-aided engineering (CAE) and computer fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis.

Design and thermal analysis of plastic injection mould

This paper presents the design of a plastic injection mould for producing warpage testing specimen and performing thermal analysis for the mould to access on the effect of thermal residual stress in the mould. The technique, theory, methods as well as consideration needed in designing of plastic injection mould are presented. Design of mould was carried out using commercial computer aided design software Unigraphics, Version 13.0. The model for thermal residual stress analysis due to uneven cooling of the specimen was developed and solved using a commercial finite element analysis software called LUSAS Analyst, Version 13.5. The software provides contour plot of temperature distribution for the model and also temperature variation through the plastic injection molding cycle by plotting time response curves. The results show that shrinkage is likely to occur in the region near the cooling channels as compared to other regions. This uneven cooling effect at different regions of mould contributed to warpage.

Automatic datum dimensioning for plastic injection mould design and manufacturing

Datum dimensioning (or ordinate dimensioning) technique is very popular in plastic injection mould drawings where the location dimensions of a large number of hole features must be specified in the drawings of the mould plates. Although commercial CAD/CAM systems provide semi-automatic tools to assist the designer in the dimensioning process, it is still a very tedious process, as the user has to specify the location of each dimension tag. This paper reports a completely automatic method where optimal placements of the dimension tags can be determined. The method employs dynamic programming technique to optimize the dimension process with respect to several criteria that can be selected by the user. The method has been implemented and incorporated into a commercial CAD/CAM system, and examples are given to illustrate the important features of the program.

Automatic layout design of plastic injection mould cooling system

This research extends our previous investigation of the automation of the preliminary design stage to the layout design stage of the cooling system design process. While the functional aspects of the cooling system are considered during the preliminary design stage, the layout design stage addresses both the functionality and manufacturability of the design. A graph structure is devised to capture a given preliminary design and a graph traversal algorithm is developed to generate candidate cooling circuits from the graph structure. Heuristic search is employed to develop the cooling circuits into the layout designs by generation of tentative manufacturing plans. A framework for fuzzy evaluation of the layout designs is developed to rate the various design alternatives generated. An experimental system is implemented to verify the feasibility of the approach, and examples generated from the system are presented to illustrate the major steps of the automatic design process.

The development of a standard component library for plastic injection mould design using an object-oriented approach

Very often, outsourced components (known as standard components) are used for reducing design effort and product cost in mould design. They are usually manufactured by specialised suppliers. 3D CAD parametric models of these components will significantly reduce mould design lead-time and cost, and enhance design flexibility. This paper presents the detailed object definition, design, and implementation of a Standard Component Library within a mould design software package, QuickMould. With many components from different suppliers implemented, it is believed that the object design has generic nature and can be expanded to include most mechanical components in a collaborative environment. The advantages of this implementation are the compressed data structure, the ease of use and simple customisation.

Associative feature modeling for concurrent engineering integration

In typical product development processes, like plastic injection mould design, design information flow is not well supported by the current available IT systems. At different stages of a product life cycle, from documentation of requirement specifications, to conceptual design, detailed structure design and production, engineering knowledge is striped off except the bare minimum geometrical and control data, such as computer-aided design (CAD) solid models and cutting tool paths. Associative relations among engineering features are normally ignored; hence data consistency and design changes are difficult to be managed. In this paper, interfacing knowledge oriented tools and CAD application is identified as a technical gap for intelligent product development, and the concept of associative feature is introduced. For high-level reasoning and the execution of decisions, to define associative features in the form of self-contained and well-defined design objects is essential. As a case study, cooling channels in the design of plastic injection moulds with a CAD tool are modeled as an illustrating associative feature type. Potential integration among different applications based on such associative features is also explored.

Application of standardization for initial design of plastic injection moulds

The preliminary work of any final plastic injection mould design is to provide an initial design of the mould assembly for product designers (customers) prior to receiving the final product CAD data. Traditionally and even up till now, this initial design is always created using 2D CAD packages. The information used for the initial design is based on the technical discussion checklist, in which most mould makers have their own standards. This checklist is also being used as a quotation. This paper presents a methodology of providing the initial design in 3D solid modelling based on the technical discussion checklist, which takes the role of the overall standard template. Information from databases is extracted and coupled with the basic information from customer, these information are input into the technical discussion checklist. Rules and heuristics are also used to assist the initial mould design. A case study is also presented to illustrate the use of the standard template and to demonstrate its real application.

Automated Generation of Lifters for Injection Moulds

An algorithm for automated identification of undercuts and the creation of the lifter subassembly in plastic injection mould design is described. The algorithm is suitable for injection mould design in a 3D mode. The input to the software is a 3D part model, parting direction and lines, and a mould-base. The software then generates the lifter subassembly and places it properly in the mould-base. This is accomplished in four steps. First, the so-called virtual core and cavity are generated without considering any undercuts. Undercut faces on the part are then identified and undercut groups are formed. Secondly, the releasing direction of each undercut group is found. Thirdly, for each undercut group, a lifter head based on its releasing direction is created. Fourthly, other standard components of a lifter assembly are retrieved and attached to the corresponding lifter head within the mould-base at the correct location. A case study is presented that illustrates the efficacy of the technique for the automated design of lifters to fulfil a real industrial requirement.

Automatic Determination of 3-D Parting Lines and Surfaces in Plastic Injection Mould Design

In this paper, a methodology to generate the 3-D parting lines and parting surfaces is presented based on the optimal parting direction, the geometrical characteristics and topological relationships of injection moulded parts. The moulding surfaces are first classified into three main groups according to their orientation to the parting direction and their topological relationships. The largest edge-loop of the surface group is then defined and the algorithm to generate the edge-loop in different surface groups is proposed. The method to calculate the projected area of an edge-loop on the plane perpendicular to the optimal parting direction is also introduced. The 3-D parting lines are generated based on the proposed criterion of considering the above projected areas of edge-loops. After the parting lines are determined, the parting surfaces are generated by extruding the parting lines perpendicularly outwards to the parting direction. The case studies show that the methodology is efficient in determining the parting lines and the parting surfaces automatically in an intelligent mould design system.