Development of Technology for Improving Productivity and Quality of Injection Molding

Abstract

This work presents a study on the application of 3D printing technology and the smart control for improving the productivity and quality in the injection molding. The cooling time and cycle time are greatly reduced using the conformal cooling channels made by metal 3D printing technology. The geometry of the cooling channels is optimized so that the cooling efficiency increases and the aesthetic of the molded part is also improved. A case study of molding of an automotive door module is applied to verified conformal cooling technology. The research result shows that the cooling time is reduced around 23%. Besides the application of 3D printing technology, a method that ensures the quality consistency of the molded parts regardless of the change of injection molding machine or the disturbance of uncertainty molding condition is proposed. The cavity sensors including pressure and temperature sensors are used to monitor the process condition inside the mold. A control strategy and an intelligent algorithms are figured out to compensate the variation of the molding condition in the mold cavity so that the quality consistency is always satisfied. This work is intended as a contribution to the development of the smart molding technology.