A comprehensive review of injection mold cooling by using conformal cooling channels and thermally enhanced molds

In mold decoration (IMD) injection molding is a relatively new multi-process technique that has been used for improving the surface quality and achieving colorful cosmetic surface of molded parts. During IMD processing, the film having the same shape as mold cavity is first inserted into the mold then molten polymer is injected into the cavity. Heat transfer in the cavity surface is significantly retarded because of the low thermal conductivity of film. As a result of the asymmetric melt and mold temperature, thermal-induced part warpage easily occurs. The effects of inserted film on the asymmetric mold temperature field of IMD injection molding process for polypropylene (PP) parts were investigated. Experiments were conducted under various conditions of mold temperature, melt temperature and film thickness. The associated part warpage and crystallinity due to the asymmetric mold temperature were examined. It was found that the heat transfer retardation results in a delay in mold temperature drop at film–mold interface of the cavity surface and the maximum temperature difference compared with that of conventional injection molding without film may be as high as 10 °C. The retardation-induced mold temperature difference and part warpage increased with increasing melt temperature and film thickness, whereas they decreased with increasing mold temperature. The crystallinity of molded PP parts increased through insertion of film. The mold temperature field of the IMD process and molded part's warpage were predicted via numerical analyses. The predicted values showed reasonable agreement with the experimental results. Asymmetric cooling system design reduced part warpage when IMD processing was used.

Effects of insert film on asymmetric mold temperature and associated part warpage

Injection moulding is a manufacturing process for producing plastic parts from both thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic materials. The aim of this paper is to model, extract core–cavity and develop injection moulding tool for manufacturing an object. The part modelling, Core–Cavity design is done using PLM software Pro/ENGINEER 4.0. Mould base design is done according to HASCO standards. The plastic flow analysis is performed. NC code for fabricating the mould is generated using Vericut software. The unit cost to make a component is estimated including all the costs like material cost, tooling cost, machining cost etc.

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njection Mould Tool Design of Power BoxSide Panel

Vacuum forming is one of the simplest means of manufacturing thin plastic parts wherein a heated plastic sheet is sent through the mould by creating a vacuum between part and mould to get the desired shape. The mould used in vacuum forming process gets heated upon continuous production which has to be cooled continuously to produce parts without affecting quality. In this paper, the currently available techniques to cool the mould viz. Chill plate attachment method, straight drilled cooling channels are studied. Finite Element Analysis is carried out on various methods of mould cooling. Temperature distribution is the criteria considered to evaluate the results of each case. The results have demonstrated that the straight drilled cooling channels are better in comparison with the chill plate attachment method of mould cooling. The concept of conformal cooling channels designed based on part shape has also been introduced and studied to reduce the cooling time of the mould which is found to have a fair temperature distribution amongst the three mould cooling methods.

Study on Temperature Distribution to Enhance the Mould Cooling Method Used in Vacuum Forming Applications

Automotive assembly lines are often characterized by robots’ failures that may result in stoppages of the lines and manual backup of tasks. The phenomena tend to impair throughput rate and products’ quality. This project presents a backup mechanism in which a newly designed mechanism performs tasks of failed robots. Maintenance is a very important part in production cycle and maintenance of machines in a manufacturing industry plays a vital role to reduce the fluctuation in production efficiency. Main objective of maintenance group is to reduce MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) and increase MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures). The main objective of this project is establishing a design which helps in backup of NC robot in case of break down. Instead of stopping of the line a backup mechanism is developed which replaces this NC robot and performs the job of NC robot. By this availability of backup it increases the production capacity, minimizes the line stop time and reduces down time.

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Improving Equipment Efficiency in RespotLine by Developing Backup System for NCRobot

Manufacturing technology has been continuously improving with effective research to reduce the cycle time of production of an object. Vacuum forming is one such process of manufacturing simple parts from thin sheet of material usually made of plastic. This work emphasizes the adoption of rapid tooling concept to vacuum forming process with an objective of reducing the cycle time of production. The cooling phase of the entire cycle time is identified as a means of improvement through its reduction. It contributes to the reduction of manufacturing lead time and time to market the product. The comparative study is conducted by inserting tube inserts of two different materials both of traditional type and rapid tooling type in order to cool the mould. The results conjecture the improvement of cooling time in tools with rapid tooling concept in comparison with those of traditional system of cooling.

Application of Rapid Tooling for Vacuum Forming to Reduce Cycle Time

Canister is a cylindrical shaped container, one end of which is open, in which bird specimen or ice pellets are loaded and fired in ice-pellet launcher system. The canister is propelled through the length of the gun barrel by means of compressed air and is arrested by canister arrester. High speed stainless canister with uniform and variable wall thickness is designed and then manufactured by the process of metal spinning in a spinning machine. For the canister to collapse without cracking, it is heat treated by annealing process. The base portion of the canister is hardened and the open end is made soft for it to collapse in desired fashion. The deformation of canister depends upon its length, internal diameter, wall thickness, shape of back face, hardness and ductility of the material. The study of collapsible characteristics of the canister is done using ABAQUS/Explicit software. For this 3D CAD modelling is done using CATIA V5 software and finite element meshing is done using HYPERMESH software. Collapsible characteristics of the canister are observed for uniform and variable wall thickness canisters, at different velocities. The result of this dynamic simulation which deals with the collapsibility characteristics of canister will be compared, at few specific velocities, for a few specific canister geometries, with the results of tests to be conducted on actual metallic canisters, in the canister launcher, now operational at the college.

/pdf/analysis-of-collapsibility-of-canister-at-highspeed-in-ice-4u9xjhk4kj.pdf

Mir Safiulla

Papers

njection Mould Tool Design of Power BoxSide Panel

Study on Temperature Distribution to Enhance the Mould Cooling Method Used in Vacuum Forming Applications

Improving Equipment Efficiency in RespotLine by Developing Backup System for NCRobot

Application of Rapid Tooling for Vacuum Forming to Reduce Cycle Time

Analysis of Collapsibility of Canister at HighSpeed in Ice Pellet Launcher UsingABAQUS/Explicit Software