Latest trends in Plastic molding

By:-Suraj.o.kanbarkar

Conventional method:-

In olden days the design of molding was a challenging task it used to take time as well as cost to
make the final design of plastics mold.

To design a finial mold number of trial were taken each with some modification to achieve the
finial mold, and for each successive trial, time as well as money is spent.

One cannot develop the mold at first attempt of trail, since there are so many factors related to
designing a mould like location of parting line, shrinkage allowance, number of jet nozzle,
temperature, flow rate, pressure, etc.

Therefore designing a plastic mold was very hectic job.

The global market for plastic injection molded parts is currently valued at $325 billion, and this
number is expected to grow by 5.7% through at least 2025. Spurred by the rapidly developing
economies of Asia, and taking advantage of process efficiencies as well as new resin chemistry,
the use of plastic components in ever more sophisticated applications poses enormous
opportunities and challenges for product designers and industrial engineers.(ref: Machine
Design)

The trend:-
To counter the above problem, software’s like Moldex, solidworks.etc are used to design the
mold efficiently.

The software helps us to

 simulate the process of injection molding,

 check the temperature difference during the injection molding process
 check the pressure loss during the process
 show bubble traps during the process
 check the filling time
 check shear stress during the process
 check the density

Overall the software considers almost all the factor for designing a mold and gives the accurate
results.

Changes can be made accordingly if it does not match to the acceptable quality. This reduces the
number of trial which was used to develop the injection mold.
Software procedure:-
 Comparison (run 1 with run 2)

The results of each run is compared with the previous one, to check for the progress

The procedure is repeated until the best, optimized mould is formed.

Example:-
Consider a plastic mold example of spiral

Here the software used is Moldex for the design of plastics mold, this software supports the file
format .mtr, .mat file
Preprocessor:-
In this step the necessary required data is selected like minimum pressure required, mold
temperature , plastic temperature, location of the nozzle, size of the nozzle, etc.,

The below windows shows the selection of the material, melt temperature, initial mold
temperature, air temperature, eject temperature cool time, mold-open time, mold preheat of the
product
Processor:-

Post processor:-
After the completion of solution, we can compare the results of the previous run to check the
progress, the below figures shows the effect of each factor in this process.
The above fig shows the filling pressure in the mould. The red color indicates the maximum
pressure at that region, here the maximum pressure is 70.211Mpa which is at the nozzle region.

The above simulation represents the time required for the material to completely fill the plastic
mould, the blue color represents the time taken to reach that location, here the material fills the
injection mold in 1.252seconds.

The above simulation represents the filling viscosity of the material during the process .The blue
color represents maximum viscosity during the process and red color represents the minimum
viscosity of the material during the process, here the maximum viscosity is 8.758 poise and
minimum viscosity is 3.552 poise.
The above simulation represents the density of the material during the process. The red color
represents the maximum density of the material in gm/cc and the blue color represents the
minimum density of the material in gm/cc, here the maximum density of the material during the
process is 0.975 gm/cc and minimum density of the material during the process is 0.7 gm/cc.

The above simulation represents the shear stress of the material during the process. The red color
represents the maximum shear stress of the material in Mpa and the blue color represents the
minimum shear stress of the material in Mpa, here the maximum shear stress of the material
during the process is 10.459 Mpa and minimum shear stress of the material during the process is
0.013 Mpa.
The above simulation represents the temperature of the material during the process. The red
color represents the maximum temperature of the material in Degree celsius and the blue color
represents the minimum temperature of the material in Degree celsius, here the maximum
temperature of the material during the process is 220.019 Degree celsius and minimum
temperature of the material during the process is 44.3 Degree Celsius.

After analyzing all the parameters if it is acceptable then it is validated further, if

not then some changes are made in the design like change of location of nozzle,
increasing or decreasing the pressure, increasing or decreasing the mould fill time,
etc., so many runs are conducted and compared with each other to match the
desired quality of injection mould.

For more info on the given example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IaKuJbwJn0