In the highly competitive injection molding industry, the ability to effectively collect information from various sensors installed in molds and machines is of the utmost relevance, enabling the ...development of data-based Industry 4.0 algorithms. In this work, an alternative to commercially available monitoring systems used in the industry was developed and tested in the scope of the TOOLING 4G project. The novelty of this system is its affordability, simplicity, real-time data acquisition and display in an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI), while being open-source firmware and software-based. These characteristics, and their combinations have been present in previous works, but, to the authors' knowledge, not all of them simultaneously. The system used an Arduino microcontroller-based data acquisition module that can be connected to any computer via a USB port. Software was developed, including a GUI, prepared to receive data from both the Arduino module and a second module. In the current state of development, data corresponding to a maximum of six sensors can be visualized, at a rate of 10 Hz, and recorded for later usage. These capabilities were verified under real-world conditions for monitoring an injection mold with the objective of creating the basis of a platform to deploy predictive maintenance. Mold temperature, cavity pressure, 3-axis acceleration, and extraction force data showed the system can successfully monitor the mold and allowed the clear distinction between normal and abnormal operating patterns.
Costs and time are correlated greatly in the precision mold industries. To improve the productivity in series production, significant reduction in the cooling time is required. The profiled conformal ...cooling channel (PCCC) is a unique approach to reduce cooling time in the injection molding process compared with a conventional straight drilled cooling channel. In this study, a maraging steel injection molding tool with PCCC was manufactured by direct metal printing. Cooling performances of the injection molding tool with different methods were investigated via low-pressure wax injection molding. The part cooling time, part temperature difference, mold surface temperature difference, and product total deformation were modeled numerically using Moldex3D simulation software. It was found that the product cooling time for the injection molding tool with PCCC was reduced greatly. The product cooling time for the injection molding tool with PCCC, with gas cooling, and without cooling channels are 27 s, 94 s, and 543 s, respectively. The molding cycle time for the injection molding tool with PCCC about 93% can be saved compared with the injection molding tool without cooling channels. The molding cycle time of the injection molding tool with PCCC about 63.2% can be saved compared with the injection molding tool with gas cooling.
To analyze the heating phase of an induction heated injection molding tool precisely, the temperature-dependent magnetic properties, B-H curves, and the hysteresis loss are necessary for the molding ...tool materials. Hence, injection molding tool steels, core materials among other materials have, in this paper, been characterized for their temperature-dependent magnetic properties. The properties have been measured using a vibrating sample magnetometer, able to reach to 350 °C. The established material database comprises the B-H loops, from which the mean B-H curve, relative permeability versus magnetic flux density, and hysteresis loss versus magnetic flux density have been extracted and are presented.
Lamination of metal sheets Himmer, T; Nakagawa, T; Anzai, M
Computers in industry,
06/1999, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This paper describes a manufacturing process to produce injection molding tools by lamination of aluminum alloy sheets. The process involves design of the tool using 3D CAD modeling, slicing of the ...data into cross sections, laser beam cutting of the sheets into 2D profiles, lamination, bonding, milling and finishing. This technology allows to include complex cooling channels in order to achieve a significant reduction of the cycle time and to control the cooling process. Because of the low bonding temperature and force, large tools can be made in a time- and cost-effective manner. The manufacturing system is similar to the technology developed by Nakagawa et al. T. Nakagawa, M. Kunieda, S. Liu, Laser cut sheet laminated forming dies by diffusion bonding, in: Proceedings of the 25th International MTDR Conference, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Japan, 1985; however, the used sheet material is different and therefore, the bonding method. In this article, the introduced bonding technique, laser cutting, milling and other important parameters such as bonding strength are discussed.
Metal additive manufacturing (MAM) provides lots of benefits and potentials in manufacturing molds or dies with sophisticated conformal cooling channels. It is known that the conformal cooling ...technology provides effective cooling to reduce cycle time for increasing productivity. Ordinarily, mold inserts fabricated by general printing procedures will result in coolant leakage in the injection molding process. The yield in the manufacturing of fully dense injection molding tools was limited to the very narrow working widow. In addition, high costs of fully dense injection mold fabricated by MAM constitute the major obstacle to its application in the mold or die industry. In general, the high cost of MAM is approximately 50–70% more expensive than conventional computer numerical control machining. In this study, a low-cost and highly efficient method of reducing coolant leakage for direct metal printed injection mold with cooling channels was proposed. This new method employs general process parameters to manufacture the green injection mold rapidly and then uses optimum heat treatment (HT) procedures to improve microstructure of the green injection mold. The results of this study revealed that optimum HT procedures can prevent coolant leakage and save manufacturing time of the injection mold fabricated by direct metal laser sintering. The evolution mechanisms of microstructure were investigated experimentally. The saving in the injection mold manufacture time about 67% can be obtained using the general process parameters.
Long-term product improvement requires detailed analysis that includes information from the entire product life cycle. Life cycle assessment according to the standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 ...provides information on the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle. The aim of the study is to analyze the environmental impact of a multicomponent plastic product in two variants and the associated customized tools using life cycle assessment. The subject of this analysis is the previous and the improved design of a multicomponent plastic cap for 19 l water bottles and the associated custom-manufactured tools. The main improvements of the custom-made tools are in the larger number of cores, and the new cap design was improved with fewer components and mass. The results show that the production and packaging of the improved multicomponent plastic cap has more than two times lower environmental impacts in the categories of global warming potential, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial acidification ozone formation, human health and non reneweable, fossil. The environmental impact of custom injection moulding tools is strongly influenced by the capacity of the injection moulding machine and the number of cores or number of products that can be produced in a batch. In addition, the results of the improved 19 l multicomponent plastic cap showed a lower environmental impact compared to previous studie of the 5 l plastic cap.
The maintenance of a tool for injection molding or forming is usually accompanied by its disassembly and assembly. The duration of the assembly activities is often a large part of the total activity ...time for the maintenance of the tool. The degree of performance of the employees in the execution of these disassembly and assembly activities is often low. In addition, allowances occur (e.g. searching for work equipment). At the Industrial Engineering Lab of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, a prototype of an assistance system was developed to support the assembly activities in toolmaking. With the help of this system, the operator is guided step by step through the assembly process. The economic potential of the system exists in the reduction of training times, the avoidance of assembly errors and the increase of labor productivity.
► We present novel and highly useful results on FDTS monolayer coating of aluminum. ► The coating is particularly applicable for coating of prototyping injection molding tools, which often are made ...of Al. ► We have demonstrated that the coating prevails in injection molding conditions and that the coating will prevent wear of the tools.
We have characterized perfluorodecyltrichlorosilane (FDTS) molecular coating of aluminum molds for polymer replication via injection molding (IM). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data, sessile drop contact angles with multiple fluids, surface energies and roughness data have been collected. Samples have been characterized immediately after coating, after more than 500 IM cycles to test durability, and after 7 months to test temporal stability. The coating was deposited in an affordable process, involving near room temperature gas phase reactions. XPS shows detectable fluorine presence on both freshly coated samples as well as on post-IM samples with estimated 30at.% on freshly coated and 28at.% on post-IM samples with more than 500 IM cycles with polystyrene (PS) and ABS polymer.
Increasing demands in industrial applications and simultaneous efforts to provide long-lasting and cost-efficient tools in the injection molding industry lead to the use of metal–ceramic joints with ...the aim to combine the specific properties of both materials. Due to its high CTE, zirconium oxide (ZrO
2
) is used for the ceramic part and is joined with the tool steel AISI H11 (1.2343). In this work, suitable joining techniques with a low heat input and therefore a low thermal load are applied and characterized for the production of metal–ceramic composites. The selection of joining techniques is based on the boundary conditions during the injection molding process, in which the composites have to resist the temperature, pressure, as well as shear and tensile loads. Therefore, besides brazing, other joining processes such as gluing, screwing, shrinking, and clamping were analyzed as possible low temperature joining techniques for ceramic-metal-compounds. The best results for the tensile strengths with 90 MPa were achieved by a brazing process, carried out in vacuum with approximately 10
−5
mbar, at a temperature of 920 °C for 5 min, using the commercially available brazing filler alloy CB4.
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