Plastics Product and Process Design Strategies

Author(s):  
Ruchi Karania ◽  
David Kazmer ◽  
Christoph Roser

Plastic components are vital components of many engineered products, frequently representing 20–40% of the product value. While injection molding is the most common process for economically producing complex designs in large quantities, a large initial monetary investment is required to develop appropriate tooling. Accordingly, injection molding may not be appropriate for applications that are not guaranteed to recoup the initial costs. In this paper, component cost and lead-time models are developed from industry data for an electrical enclosure consisting of two parts produced by a variety of low to medium volume manufacturing processes including fused deposition modeling, direct fabrication, and injection molding with used tooling, soft prototype tooling, and hard tooling. The viability of each process is compared with respect to the manufacturing cost and lead time for specific production quantities of one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand. The results indicate that the average cost per enclosure assembly is highly sensitive to the production quantity, varying in range from $243 per enclosure for quantity one hundred to $0.52 per enclosure for quantity ten thousand. The most appropriate process varies greatly with the desired production quantity and cost/lead time sensitivity. As such, a probabilistic analysis was utilized to evaluate the effect of uncertain demand and market delays, the result of which demonstrated the importance of maintaining supply chain flexibility by minimizing initial cost and lead time.

2007 ◽  
Vol 129 (12) ◽  
pp. 1225-1233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruchi Karania ◽  
David Kazmer

Plastic components are vital components of many engineered products, frequently representing 20–40% of the product value. While injection molding is the most common process for economically producing complex designs in large quantities, a large initial monetary investment and extended development time are required to develop appropriate tooling. For applications with lower or unknown production quantities, designers may prefer another process that has a lower development cost and lead time albeit with higher marginal costs and production times. A methodology is presented that assists the designer to select the most appropriate manufacturing process that trades off the total production costs with production lead times. The approach is to develop aggregate component cost and lead-time models as a function of production quantity from extensive industry data for an electrical enclosure consisting of two components. Binding quotes were secured from multiple suppliers for a variety of manufacturing processes including computer numerical control machining, fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, vacuum casting, direct fabrication, and injection molding with soft prototype and production tooling. The methodology yields a Pareto optimal set that compares the production costs and lead times as a function of the production quantity. The results indicate that the average cost per enclosure assembly is highly sensitive to the production quantity, with average costs varying by more than a factor of 100 for production quantities varying between 100 and 10,000 assemblies. Each of the processes is competitive with respect to total production cost and total production lead time under differing conditions; a flow chart is provided as an example of a decision support tool that can be provided to assist process selection during the product development process and thereby reduce the product development time and cost.


Author(s):  
Ruchi Karania ◽  
David Kazmer

Plastic components are vital components of many engineered products, frequently representing 20–40% of the product value. While injection molding is the most common process for economically producing complex designs in large quantities, a large initial monetary investment is required to develop appropriate tooling. Accordingly, injection molding may not be appropriate for applications that are not guaranteed to recoup the initial costs. This paper extends previous work [1] with component cost and lead-time models developed from extensive industry data. The application is an electrical enclosure consisting of two parts produced by a variety of low to high volume manufacturing processes including CNC machining, fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, vacuum casting, direct fabrication, and injection molding with soft prototype and production tooling. The viability of each process is compared for production quantities of one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand. The results indicate that the average cost per enclosure assembly is highly sensitive to the production quantity, varying in range from US$0.35 per enclosure for ten thousand assemblies produced via injection molding to US$49.30 per enclosure for one hundred assemblies produced via fused deposition modeling. The results indicate the cost and lead time advantages of the alternative processes; a flow chart is provided to assist process selection in engineering design.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6946
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Podsiadły ◽  
Andrzej Skalski ◽  
Wiktor Rozpiórski ◽  
Marcin Słoma

In this paper, we are focusing on comparing results obtained for polymer elements manufactured with injection molding and additive manufacturing techniques. The analysis was performed for fused deposition modeling (FDM) and single screw injection molding with regards to the standards used in thermoplastics processing technology. We argue that the cross-section structure of the sample obtained via FDM is the key factor in the fabrication of high-strength components and that the dimensions of the samples have a strong influence on the mechanical properties. Large cross-section samples, 4 × 10 mm2, with three perimeter layers and 50% infill, have lower mechanical strength than injection molded reference samples—less than 60% of the strength. However, if we reduce the cross-section dimensions down to 2 × 4 mm2, the samples will be more durable, reaching up to 110% of the tensile strength observed for the injection molded samples. In the case of large cross-section samples, strength increases with the number of contour layers, leading to an increase of up to 97% of the tensile strength value for 11 perimeter layer samples. The mechanical strength of the printed components can also be improved by using lower values of the thickness of the deposited layers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teunis van Manen ◽  
Shahram Janbaz ◽  
Kaspar M. B. Jansen ◽  
Amir A. Zadpoor

AbstractShape-shifting materials are a powerful tool for the fabrication of reconfigurable materials. Upon activation, not only a change in their shape but also a large shift in their material properties can be realized. As compared with the 4D printing of 2D-to-3D shape-shifting materials, the 4D printing of reconfigurable (i.e., 3D-to-3D shape-shifting) materials remains challenging. That is caused by the intrinsically 2D nature of the layer-by-layer manner of fabrication, which limits the possible shape-shifting modes of 4D printed reconfigurable materials. Here, we present a single-step production method for the fabrication and programming of 3D-to-3D shape-changing materials, which requires nothing more than a simple modification of widely available fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers. This simple modification allows the printer to print on curved surfaces. We demonstrate how this modified printer can be combined with various design strategies to achieve high levels of complexity and versatility in the 3D-to-3D shape-shifting behavior of our reconfigurable materials and devices. We showcase the potential of the proposed approach for the fabrication of deployable medical devices including deployable bifurcation stents that are otherwise extremely challenging to create.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1875
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Ugo Enemuoh ◽  
Venkata Gireesh Menta ◽  
Abdulaziz Abutunis ◽  
Sean O’Brien ◽  
Labiba Imtiaz Kaya ◽  
...  

There is limited knowledge about energy and carbon emission performance comparison between additive fused deposition modeling (FDM) and consolidation plastic injection molding (PIM) forming techniques, despite their recent high industrial applications such as tools and fixtures. In this study, developed empirical models focus on the production phase of the polylactic acid (PLA) thermoplastic polyester life cycle while using FDM and PIM processes to produce American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D638 Type IV dog bone samples to compare their energy consumption and eco-impact. It was established that energy consumption by the FDM layer creation phase dominated the filament extrusion and PLA pellet production phases, with, overwhelmingly, 99% of the total energy consumption in the three production phases combined. During FDM PLA production, about 95.5% of energy consumption was seen during actual FDM part building. This means that the FDM process parameters such as infill percentage, layer thickness, and printing speed can be optimized to significantly improve the energy consumption of the FDM process. Furthermore, plastic injection molding consumed about 38.2% less energy and produced less carbon emissions per one kilogram of PLA formed parts compared to the FDM process. The developed functional unit measurement models can be employed in setting sustainable manufacturing goals for PLA production.


2014 ◽  
Vol 592-594 ◽  
pp. 400-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandeep V. Raut ◽  
Vijaykumar S. Jatti ◽  
T.P. Singh

Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is one of the thirty techniques of rapid prototyping methods that produce prototypes from polymer materials (natural or with different grades). Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) is one of the good material among all polymer materials. It is used in the layer by layer manufacturing of the prototype which is in the semi-molten plastic filament form and built up on the platform from bottom to top. In FDM, one of the critical factor is to select the built up orientation of the model since it affects the different areas of the model like main material, support material, built up time, total cost per part and most important the mechanical properties of the part. In view of this, objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of the built-up orientation on the mechanical properties and total cost of the FDM parts. Experiments were carried out on STRATASYS FDM type rapid prototyping machine coupled with CATALYST software and ABS as main material. Tensile and Impact specimens were prepared as per the ASTM standard with different built-up orientation and in three geometrical axes. It can be concluded from the experimental analysis that built orientation has significant affect on the tensile, impact and total cost of the FDM parts. These conclusions will help the design engineers to decide on proper build orientation, so that FDM parts can be fabricated with good mechanical properties at minimum manufacturing cost.


2015 ◽  
Vol 773-774 ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noor Mu'izzah Ahmad Isa ◽  
Nasuha Sa'ude ◽  
M. Ibrahim ◽  
Saiful Manar Hamid ◽  
Khairu Kamarudin

This paper presents of Polymer Matrix Composite (PMC) as feedstock used in Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) machine. This study discussed on the development of a new PMC material by the injection molding machine. The material consist of copper powder filled in an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), binder and surfactant material. The effect of metal filled in ABS and binder content was investigated experimentally by the Melt Flow Index (MFI) machine. Based on the result obtained, an increment of copper filled in ABS by volume percentage (vol. %) effected on melt flow index results. With highly filled copper in PMC composites increase the melt flow index results. It was concluded that, the propensity of the melt flow allow an internal force in PMC material through the injection molding and FDM machine.


2014 ◽  
Vol 607 ◽  
pp. 65-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ibrahim ◽  
N.S. Badrishah ◽  
Nasuha Sa'ude ◽  
Mohd Halim Irwan Ibrahim

This paper presents the development of a new Wood Plastic Composite (WPC) material for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) feedstocks. In this study, a biodegradable polymer matrix (POLYACTIDE, PLA) was mixed with natural wood flour (WF) by Brabender mixer, and the samples produced by injection molding machine. The effect of wood was investigated as a filler material in composite FDM feedstock and the detailed formulations of compounding ratio by weight percentage. Based on results obtained, it was found that, compounding ratio of PLA80%:WF20% has a goods result on the tensile strength and PLA60% : WF40% gave a higher value of flexural strength. An increment of 20% to 40% WF filler affected the flexural strength, and hardness results. The highly filled WF content in PLA composites increases the mechanical properties of PMC material through the injection molding process. The potential of development of a sustainable composite material will be explored as the FDM feedstocks in the rapid prototyping process.


Author(s):  
Maria Elizete Kunkel ◽  
Mayra Torres Vasques ◽  
João Aléssio Juliano Perfeito ◽  
Nataly Rabelo Mina Zambrana ◽  
Tainara dos Santos Bina ◽  
...  

Abstract Face shields have been adopted worldwide as personal protective equipment for healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. This device provides a transparent facial physical barrier reducing the exposure to aerosol particles. The fused deposition modeling (FDM) is the most applied process of additive manufacturing due to its usability and low-cost. The injection molding (IM) is the fastest process for mass production. This study is the first to perform a qualitative comparison between the use of FDM and IM processes for mass production and rapid distribution of face shields in a pandemic. The design of the face shield and tests were conducted in prototyping cycles based on requirements of medical, Brazilian standards, manufacturing, and production. The FDM face shields manufacturing was carried out by a volunteer network, and the IM manufacturing was carried out by companies. The volunteers produced 35,000 medical face shields through the FDM process with daily delivery to several hospitals. A total of 80,000 face shields was produced by the IM process and delivered to remote Brazilian regions. The mass production of 115,000 face shields protected health professionals from public hospitals in all states of Brazil. In a pandemic, both FDM and IM processes are suitable for mass production of face shields. Once a committed network of volunteers is formed in strategic regions, the FDM process promotes a fast daily production. The IM process is the best option for large scale production of face shields and delivery to remote areas where access to 3D printing is reduced.


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