SbstractThe cooling channels of a mold for plastic injection have to be as close as possible to the part geometry in order to ensure fast and homogeneous cooling. However, conventional methods to manufacture cooling channels (drilling) can only produce linear holes. Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technique capable to manufacture complex cooling channels (known as conformal cooling). Nevertheless, because of the high costs of SLM the benefits of conformal collings are still not clear. The current work investigates two designs of conformal coolings: i) parallel circuit; ii) serial circuit. Both coolings are evaluated against to traditional cooling circuits (linear channels) by CAE simulation to produce parts of polypropylene. The results show that if the conformal cooling is not properly designed it cannot provide reasonable results. The deformation of the product can be reduced significantly after injection but the cycle time reduced not more than 6%.

The development of additive manufacturing using metallic materials, such as the selective laser melting, has allowed the manufacture of free form cooling channels inside the molds for plastic injection. Reduction on the injection cycle time and product quality are expected using such cooling channels (also known as conformal cooling channels). The knowledge to design such cooling system are limited today. This work aims to collaborate with this issue. A new design of cooling channels using series and parallel concept are proposed and its efficiency were analyzed against some conformal cooling geometry found on the literature today. The analyses were carried out by a Computer Aided Engineering software using an automotive component as a workpiece. The results show that the design of the new approach of conformal cooling channels has an influence on the cooling performance and if the conformal cooling was not carefully designed, it cannot achieve the expected benefits. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 58:552–559, 2018. © 2017 Society of Plastics Engineers