A new concept of active temperature control for an injection molding process using infrared radiation heating

2002 ◽  
Vol 42 (12) ◽  
pp. 2418-2429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takushi Saito ◽  
Isao Satoh ◽  
Yasuo Kurosaki
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
Infrared Radiation ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Radiation Heating ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Active Temperature

scholarly journals Study on External Gas-Assisted Mold Temperature Control with the Assistance of a Flow Focusing Device in the Injection Molding Process

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Truong Giang ◽  
Pham Son Minh ◽  
Tran Anh Son ◽  
Tran Minh The Uyen ◽  
Thanh-Hai Nguyen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
Mold Temperature ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Melt Flow ◽  
Flow Focusing ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Heating Efficiency ◽  
Flow Length ◽  
Insert Plate

In the injection molding field, the flow of plastic material is one of the most important issues, especially regarding the ability of melted plastic to fill the thin walls of products. To improve the melt flow length, a high mold temperature was applied with pre-heating of the cavity surface. In this paper, we present our research on the injection molding process with pre-heating by external gas-assisted mold temperature control. After this, we observed an improvement in the melt flow length into thin-walled products due to the high mold temperature during the filling step. In addition, to develop the heating efficiency, a flow focusing device (FFD) was applied and verified. The simulations and experiments were carried out within an air temperature of 400 °C and heating time of 20 s to investigate a flow focusing device to assist with external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC), with the application of various FFD types for the temperature distribution of the insert plate. The heating process was applied for a simple insert model with dimensions of 50 mm × 50 mm × 2 mm, in order to verify the influence of the FFD geometry on the heating result. After that, Ex-GMTC with the assistance of FFD was carried out for a mold-reading process, and the FFD influence was estimated by the mold heating result and the improvement of the melt flow length using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). The results show that the air sprue gap (h) significantly affects the temperature of the insert and an air sprue gap of 3 mm gives the best heating rate, with the highest temperature being 321.2 °C. Likewise, the actual results show that the height of the flow focusing device (V) also influences the temperature of the insert plate and that a 5 mm high FFD gives the best results with a maximum temperature of 332.3 °C. Moreover, the heating efficiency when using FFD is always higher than without FFD. After examining the effect of FFD, its application was considered, in order to improve the melt flow length in injection molding, which increased from 38.6 to 170 mm, while the balance of the melt filling was also clearly improved.

scholarly journals The Feasibility of an Internal Gas-Assisted Heating Method for Improving the Melt Filling Ability of Polyamide 6 Thermoplastic Composites in a Thin Wall Injection Molding Process

Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Trung Do ◽  
Tran Minh The Uyen ◽  
Pham Son Minh
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Heating Rate ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
Cavity Surface ◽  
Heating Process ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Thin Wall ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Filling Ability ◽  
Wall Injection

In thin wall injection molding, the filling of plastic material into the cavity will be restricted by the frozen layer due to the quick cooling of the hot melt when it contacts with the lower temperature surface of the cavity. This problem is heightened in composite material, which has a higher viscosity than pure plastic. In this paper, to reduce the frozen layer as well as improve the filling ability of polyamide 6 reinforced with 30 wt.% glass fiber (PA6/GF30%) in the thin wall injection molding process, a preheating step with the internal gas heating method was applied to heat the cavity surface to a high temperature, and then, the filling step was commenced. In this study, the filling ability of PA6/GF30% was studied with a melt flow thickness varying from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. To improve the filling ability, the mold temperature control technique was applied. In this study, an internal gas-assisted mold temperature control (In-GMTC) using different levels of mold insert thickness and gas temperatures to achieve rapid mold surface temperature control was established. The heating process was observed using an infrared camera and estimated by the temperature distribution and the heating rate. Then, the In-GMTC was employed to produce a thin product by an injection molding process with the In-GMTC system. The simulation results show that with agas temperature of 300 °C, the cavity surface could be heated under a heating rate that varied from 23.5 to 24.5 °C/s in the first 2 s. Then, the heating rate decreased. After the heating process was completed, the cavity temperature was varied from 83.8 to about 164.5 °C. In-GMTC was also used for the injection molding process with a part thickness that varied from 0.1 to 0.5 mm. The results show that with In-GMTC, the filling ability of composite material clearly increased from 2.8 to 18.6 mm with a flow thickness of 0.1 mm.

scholarly journals Design of Multimodel based MPC and IMC control schemes applied to injection molding machine

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Kanaga Lakshmi ◽  
D. Manamalli ◽  
M. Mohamed Rafiq
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Molding Machine ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Melt Temperature ◽  
Injection Molding Machine ◽  
And Control

Good control of plastic melt temperature for injection molding is very important in reducing operator setup time, ensuring product quality, and preventing thermal degradation of the melt. The controllability and set points of barrel temperature also depend on the precise monitoring and control of plastic melt temperature. Motivated by the practical temperature control of injection molding, this paper proposes MPC and IMC based control scheme. A robust system identification and control methodology is developed which uses canonical varieties analysis for identification and model predictive control for regulation. The injection molding process consists of three zones and the mathematical model for each of the zone is different. The control output for each zone controller is assigned a weight based on the computed probability of each model and the resulting action is the weighted average of the control moves of the individual zone controllers. Keywords: Injection-Molding Machine (IMM), IMC Control, Temperature Control.

scholarly journals Study on External Gas-Assisted Mold Temperature Control for Improving the Melt Flow Length of Thin Rib Products in the Injection Molding Process

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phan The Nhan ◽  
Thanh Trung Do ◽  
Tran Anh Son ◽  
Pham Son Minh
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Mold Temperature ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Thin Wall ◽  
Mold Surface ◽  
Melt Flow ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Flow Length

In the injection molding process, mold temperature control is one of the most efficient methods for improving product quality. In this research, an external gas-assisted mold temperature control (Ex-GMTC) with gas temperature variation from 200°C to 400°C was applied to thin wall injection molding at melt thicknesses from 0.2 to 0.6 mm. The melt flow length was evaluated through the application of this system to the mold of a thin rib product. The results show that the heating process achieves high efficiency in the initial 20 s, with a maximum heating rate of 6.4°C/s. In this case, the mold surface reached 158.4°C. By applying Ex-GMTC to a 0.2 mm flow thickness, the flow length increased from 37.85 to 41.32 mm with polypropylene (PP) material and from 14.54 to 15.8 mm with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) material. With the thin rib mold and use of Ex-GMTC, the mold temperature varied from 112.0°C to 140.8°C and the thin rib height reached 7.0 mm.

scholarly journals Improving the Consistency of Injection Molding Products by Intelligent Temperature Compensation Control

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yufei Ruan ◽  
Huang Gao ◽  
Dequn Li
Keyword(s):  
Injection Molding ◽  
Temperature Control ◽  
Control Strategy ◽  
Temperature Compensation ◽  
Injection Molding Process ◽  
Molding Process ◽  
Dynamic Conditions ◽  
Q Learning ◽  
Compensation Control ◽  
Control Accuracy

Temperature stability is critical to the consistency of product quality in the injection molding process, and it is very necessary to improve the temperature control accuracy under dynamic conditions. However, due to the large time delay, strong coupling, and the dynamic characteristics existing in the system, it is not an easy task to achieve precise temperature control in the injection molding process. In this paper, a new intelligent temperature compensation control strategy for the injection molding process under dynamic conditions is proposed in order to solve two key problems in the compensation control strategy: the compensation time and compensation quantity. A data-based feedforward iterative learning control (ILC) algorithm is designed to learn the optimal compensation time. Once the optimal compensation time is learned, a deep Q-learning algorithm which combined Q-learning with an artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed to learn the optimal compensation quantity. An experimental platform is designed to validate the superiority of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively improve temperature control accuracy under dynamic conditions. Meanwhile, the product consistency has also been improved.

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