To read this content please select one of the options below:

Simulation of injection molding into rapid‐prototyped molds

Rajitha Aluru (Graduate Student, at the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA. E‐mail: keefe@me.udel.edu advani@me.udel.edu)
Michael Keefe (Associate Professor all at the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA. E‐mail: keefe@me.udel.edu advani@me.udel.edu)
Suresh Advani (Professor, all at the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA. E‐mail: keefe@me.udel.edu advani@me.udel.edu)

Rapid Prototyping Journal

ISSN: 1355-2546

Article publication date: 1 March 2001

1901

Abstract

Injection molding is a very mature technology, but the growth of layer‐build, additive, manufacturing technologies (rapid prototypying) has the potential of expanding injection molding into areas not commercially feasible with traditional molds and molding techniques. This integration of injection molding with rapid prototyping has undergone many demonstrations of potential. What is missing is the fundamental understanding of how the modifications to the mold material and mold manufacturing process impact both the mold design and the injection molding process. This work expanded on an approach to utilize current numerical simulation programs and created a tool for optimizing the creation and use of non‐metal molds for injection molding. Verification and validation work is presented. The model was exercised by studying the effect of varying the thermal conductivity on final‐part distortions. This work clearly showed that one could not obtain reasonable results by simply changing a few input parameters in the current simulations. Although the approach did produce more realistic results, more work will be required for a tool capable of accurate, quantitative predictions.

Keywords

Citation

Aluru, R., Keefe, M. and Advani, S. (2001), "Simulation of injection molding into rapid‐prototyped molds", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 42-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552540110365153

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited

Related articles