Development of a Reliable Vibration Based Health Indicator for Monitoring the Lubricating Condition of the Toggle Clamping System of a Plastic Injection Molding Machine

Plastic injection molding has become one of the most widely used polymer processing methods due to its ability to viably produce large volumes of complex parts in a short time frame. Most of the plastic injection molding machines currently used in industry possess a toggle clamping mechanism that undergoes a repeated clamping and unclamping cycle during operation. This toggle must therefore be properly lubricated to avoid catastrophic failure and eventual machine downtime. To overcome this limitation, the industry currently relies on the experience of a skilled operator, paired with a fixed empirical value, to determine the timing for re-lubrication. This method often leads to the machine operator either wasting lubricant by over-lubricating the toggle, or damaging the toggle by failing to re-lubricate when needed. Herein, we explore the use of vibration analysis to perform real-time condition monitoring of the lubrication condition of the toggle clamping system. In this study, our novel structural response analysis out performed both traditional time domain and frequency domain analyses in isolating the vibrational signatures indicative of lubricant degradation. Additionally, this study confirms that the vibration generated during the unclamping period of the toggle, proved to contain more valuable information relevant to the instantaneous lubricant quality than provided by its corresponding clamping period.