scholarly journals The feasibility of external gas-assisted mold-temperature control for thin-wall injection molding

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.

Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Trung Do ◽  
Tran Minh The Uyen ◽  
Pham Son Minh

In thin wall injection molding, the filling of plastic material into the cavity will be restricted by the frozen layer due to the quick cooling of the hot melt when it contacts with the lower temperature surface of the cavity. This problem is heightened in composite material, which has a higher viscosity than pure plastic. In this paper, to reduce the frozen layer as well as improve the filling ability of polyamide 6 reinforced with 30 wt.% glass fiber (PA6/GF30%) in the thin wall injection molding process, a preheating step with the internal gas heating method was applied to heat the cavity surface to a high temperature, and then, the filling step was commenced. In this study, the filling ability of PA6/GF30% was studied with a melt flow thickness varying from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. To improve the filling ability, the mold temperature control technique was applied. In this study, an internal gas-assisted mold temperature control (In-GMTC) using different levels of mold insert thickness and gas temperatures to achieve rapid mold surface temperature control was established. The heating process was observed using an infrared camera and estimated by the temperature distribution and the heating rate. Then, the In-GMTC was employed to produce a thin product by an injection molding process with the In-GMTC system. The simulation results show that with agas temperature of 300 °C, the cavity surface could be heated under a heating rate that varied from 23.5 to 24.5 °C/s in the first 2 s. Then, the heating rate decreased. After the heating process was completed, the cavity temperature was varied from 83.8 to about 164.5 °C. In-GMTC was also used for the injection molding process with a part thickness that varied from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. The results show that with In-GMTC, the filling ability of composite material clearly increased from 2.8 to 18.6 mm with a flow thickness of 0.1 mm.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 861 ◽  
pp. 188-192
Author(s):  
Truong Giang Nguyen ◽  
Son Minh Pham ◽  
Anh Son Tran

In recently year, the plastic product is almost made by injection molding method. In this paper, a hot gas was used for mold heating with the gas temperature varied from 200°C to 400°C. The results showed that with three types of gas temperature, the heating rate is high in the first 20 s and the highest heating speed of 8.25°C/s could be achieved with 400°C gas. In all cases, the mold temperature has a limitation after 30 s of heating. In our experiment, the limitation of cavity temperature is 172.2°C. This cavity temperature is almost good for the melt flow in to the cavity, especially with the thin wall molding cases.


2019 ◽  
Vol 971 ◽  
pp. 21-26
Author(s):  
Minh The Uyen Tran ◽  
Tuyen Giao Le ◽  
Trung Do Thanh ◽  
Son Minh Pham

Gas-assisted mold temperature control (GMTC) is a new technique in the field of mold temperature control. It enables rapid heating and cooling of the cavity surface during the injection molding process. In general, the goals of mold temperature control are to increase the mold surface to the target temperature before filling of the melt and to cool the melt to the ejection temperature. In this paper, dynamic mold temperature control is used for a thin-walled molding part as the temperature distribution and the heating rate are observed. The heating step of DMTC is achieved via hot-air flow directly to the thin-walled area. The results show that the heating rate reached 7.0 °C/s and that the temperature of the mold surface increased from 25 °C to greater than 165 °C within 20 s. A comparison showed that the difference between the simulation and experiment temperatures was less than 5.0 °C. Thus, this method can be used to accurately predict the outcome of a heating step before the actual process is carried out.


2015 ◽  
Vol 752-753 ◽  
pp. 949-954
Author(s):  
Pham Son Minh ◽  
Thanh Trung Do

In this study, a hot gas is used for heating the cavity surface of a mold. Different stamp thickness were designed and insert into the cavity plate. The stamp surface temperature was heated to above the glass transition temperature of the common plastic material. The heating result show that cavity surface can be heated to 196 °C after 20 s. The highest temperature appears at the center stamp surface. The stamp thickness strongly affects the heating speed and heating uniformity. When the stamp thickness is 0.5 mm the fastest heating rate can be reached with the value of 8.3oC/s. With the thicker stamp, the slower heating rate could be reached.


Author(s):  
Catalin Fetecau ◽  
Ion Postolache ◽  
Felicia Stan

The research presented in this paper involves numerical and experimental efforts to investigate the relative thin-wall injection molding process in order to obtain high dimensional quality complex parts. To better understand the effects of various processing parameters (the filling time, injection pressure, the melting temperature, the mold temperature) on the injection molding of a thin-wall complex part, the molding experiments are regenerated into the computer model using the Moldflow Plastics Insight (MPI) 6.1 software. The computer visualization of the filling phase allows accurate prediction of the location of the flow front, welding lines and air traps. Furthermore, in order to optimize the injection molding process, the effects of the geometry of the runner system on the filling and packing phases are also investigated. It is shown that computational modeling could be used to help the process and mold designer to produce accurate parts.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 863 ◽  
pp. 97-102
Author(s):  
Huynh Duc Thuan ◽  
Tran Anh Son ◽  
Pham Son Minh

In this paper, an induction heating system was applied to the heating stage in the injection molding process. Through simulation and experiment, the heating process was estimated by the temperature distribution and the heating rate. In the simulation, the mold temperature was increased from 30°C to 180°C in 9 s. Therefore, the heating rate was higher than 16°C/s, which represents a positive result in the field of mold heating. Additionally, the temperature distribution revealed that the higher temperature is concentrated on the gate area, while the outside of the mold cavity is at a lower temperature. The same parameters were applied to both the experiment and the simulation, and the results were in good agreement.


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