Injection molding simulation with variothermal mold temperature control of highly filled polyphenylene sulfide

Author(s):  
A. Birkholz ◽  
M. Tschiersky ◽  
J. Wortberg
Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Truong Giang ◽  
Pham Son Minh ◽  
Tran Anh Son ◽  
Tran Minh The Uyen ◽  
Thanh-Hai Nguyen ◽  
...  

In the injection molding field, the flow of plastic material is one of the most important issues, especially regarding the ability of melted plastic to fill the thin walls of products. To improve the melt flow length, a high mold temperature was applied with pre-heating of the cavity surface. In this paper, we present our research on the injection molding process with pre-heating by external gas-assisted mold temperature control. After this, we observed an improvement in the melt flow length into thin-walled products due to the high mold temperature during the filling step. In addition, to develop the heating efficiency, a flow focusing device (FFD) was applied and verified. The simulations and experiments were carried out within an air temperature of 400 °C and heating time of 20 s to investigate a flow focusing device to assist with external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC), with the application of various FFD types for the temperature distribution of the insert plate. The heating process was applied for a simple insert model with dimensions of 50 mm × 50 mm × 2 mm, in order to verify the influence of the FFD geometry on the heating result. After that, Ex-GMTC with the assistance of FFD was carried out for a mold-reading process, and the FFD influence was estimated by the mold heating result and the improvement of the melt flow length using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). The results show that the air sprue gap (h) significantly affects the temperature of the insert and an air sprue gap of 3 mm gives the best heating rate, with the highest temperature being 321.2 °C. Likewise, the actual results show that the height of the flow focusing device (V) also influences the temperature of the insert plate and that a 5 mm high FFD gives the best results with a maximum temperature of 332.3 °C. Moreover, the heating efficiency when using FFD is always higher than without FFD. After examining the effect of FFD, its application was considered, in order to improve the melt flow length in injection molding, which increased from 38.6 to 170 mm, while the balance of the melt filling was also clearly improved.


Author(s):  
Shia-Chung Chen ◽  
Yaw-Jen Chang ◽  
Jen-An Chang ◽  
Hsin-Shu Peng ◽  
Ying-Chieh Wang

Dynamic mold surface temperature control (DMTC) has the advantage of improving molded part qualities without significant increases in cycle time. A gas-assisted heating system combined with water cooling was developed to achieve DMTC for injection molding. With gas-assisted heating, it takes 2s for the mold surface temperature to vary from 60 °C to 120 °C whereas it requires 186s using water heating. Further, it takes 21s and 84s for the mold surface to cool to 60 °C under gas heating and water heating, respectively. The gas-assisted heating system also shows excellent efficiency for micro injection molding of biochips to achieve high replication accuracy of the micro channels.


Author(s):  
Peng Zhao ◽  
Weimin Yang ◽  
Xiaoman Wang ◽  
Jiangang Li ◽  
Bo Yan ◽  
...  

Being able to predict products’ degrees of crystallinity and thereby optimize their crystallization processes is of great significance for producing high-quality polymeric products in injection molding. However, it is rather difficult to theoretically establish the relationship between the crystallization results and processing conditions (high cooling rates and pressures, strong and complex flow fields). Injection molding simulation software can simulate polymers’ density results during packing stage, and these predicted density results can be used to calculate polymers’ crystallinity results. Based on this idea, a novel method was proposed to predict the degrees of crystallinity for polymers during packing stage. In this method, pressure and temperature results are first simulated by an injection molding simulation software, and then the density results are calculated based on a pressure–volume–temperature model. Next, the crystallinity results are solved according to the densities of the fully crystalline part and the purely amorphous part. Finally, two case studies are conducted to verify the proposed crystallinity prediction method. Moreover, the effects of packing parameters (mold temperature, packing pressure, and packing time) on polymers’ crystallization behaviors are investigated. The experimental results show that the proposed method is correct and effective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phan The Nhan ◽  
Thanh Trung Do ◽  
Tran Anh Son ◽  
Pham Son Minh

In the injection molding process, mold temperature control is one of the most efficient methods for improving product quality. In this research, an external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC) with gas temperature variation from 200°C to 400°C was applied to thin wall injection molding at melt thicknesses from 0.2 to 0.6 mm. The melt flow length was evaluated through the application of this system to the mold of a thin rib product. The results show that the heating process achieves high efficiency in the initial 20 s, with a maximum heating rate of 6.4°C/s. In this case, the mold surface reached 158.4°C. By applying Ex-GMTC to a 0.2 mm flow thickness, the flow length increased from 37.85 to 41.32 mm with polypropylene (PP) material and from 14.54 to 15.8 mm with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) material. With the thin rib mold and use of Ex-GMTC, the mold temperature varied from 112.0°C to 140.8°C and the thin rib height reached 7.0 mm.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 168781401880610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pham Son Minh ◽  
Thanh Trung Do ◽  
Tran Minh The Uyen

Simulation and experimental testing were conducted on an external gas-assisted mold-temperature control combined with a pulsed cooling system used for thin-wall injection molding to determine its effect on the heating rate and temperature distribution of a mold surface. For mold heating via external gas-assisted mold-temperature control, a hot gas was directly discharged on the cavity surface. Based on the heat convection between the hot gas and the cavity surface, the cavity temperature rose to the target value. Practically, the gap between the heating surface and the gas gate is an important parameter as it strongly influences the heating process. Therefore, this parameter was analyzed under different values of plate-insert thickness herein. Heating was elucidated by the temperature distribution and heating-rate data detected by the infrared camera and sensors. Then, external gas-assisted mold-temperature control was applied for the thin-wall injection-molding part of 0.5 mm thickness with the local-gate-temperature control. The results show that with 300°C gas temperature, the heating rate could reach 9°C/s with a 0.5-mm stamp thickness and a 4-mm gas gap. The results show that with local heating at the melt-entrance area of the mold plate, the cavity was filled with a 20-s heating cycle.


2012 ◽  
Vol 729 ◽  
pp. 126-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferenc Szabó ◽  
József Gábor Kovács

The pressure-temperature-specific volume relation of polymers is important not only for physical chemistry, but they are very significant input data for injection molding simulation software. Todays methods for measuring pvT data are slow, measurements can take days to be carried out, and in many cases the accuracy of the measurement is unsatisfactory. In our work, a new measuring method has been developed which makes the determination of the pvT relation faster compared to conventional processes within injection molding processing conditions. For the measurements a special injection mould was developed, in which the pvT relation of the material can be determined from the shrinkage in the mold. The data measured by the new method using polypropylene at a mold temperature of 23°C were compared to the data given in the database of the simulation software.


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