Abstract
Functional parts are needed for design verification testing, field trials, customer evaluation, and production planning. By eliminating multiple steps, the creation of the injection mold directly by a rapid prototyping (RP) process holds the best promise of reducing the time and cost needed to mold low-volume quantities of parts. The potential of this integration of injection molding with RP has been demonstrated many times. What is missing is the fundamental understanding of how the modifications to the mold material and RP manufacturing process impact both the mold design and the injection molding process. In addition, numerical simulation techniques have now become helpful tools of mold designers and process engineers for traditional injection molding. But all current simulation packages for conventional injection molding are no longer applicable to this new type of injection molds, mainly because the property of the mold material changes greatly. In this paper, an integrated approach to accomplish a numerical simulation of injection molding into rapid-prototyped molds is established and a corresponding simulation system is developed. Comparisons with experimental results are employed for verification, which show that the present scheme is well suited to handle RP fabricated stereolithography (SL) molds.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Wang KK (1980) System approach to injection molding process. Polym-Plast Technol Eng 14(1):75–93
Shelesh-Nezhad K, Siores E (1997) Intelligent system for plastic injection molding process design. J Mater Process Technol 63(1–3):458–462
Aluru R, Keefe M, Advani S (2001) Simulation of injection molding into rapid-prototyped molds. Rapid Prototyping J 7(1):42–51
Shen SF (1984) Simulation of polymeric flows in the injection molding process. Int J Numer Methods Fluids 4(2):171–184
Agassant JF, Alles H, Philipon S, Vincent M (1988) Experimental and theoretical study of the injection molding of thermoplastic materials. Polym Eng Sci 28(7):460–468
Chiang HH, Hieber CA, Wang KK (1991) A unified simulation of the filling and post-filling stages in injection molding. Part I: formulation. Polym Eng Sci 31(2):116–124
Zhou H, Li D (2001) A numerical simulation of the filling stage in injection molding based on a surface model. Adv Polym Technol 20(2):125–131
Himasekhar K, Lottey J, Wang KK (1992) CAE of mold cooling in injection molding using a three-dimensional numerical simulation. J Eng Ind Trans ASME 114(2):213–221
Tang LQ, Pochiraju K, Chassapis C, Manoochehri S (1998) Computer-aided optimization approach for the design of injection mold cooling systems. J Mech Des, Trans ASME 120(2):165–174
Rizzo FJ, Shippy DJ (1977) An advanced boundary integral equation method for three-dimensional thermoelasticity. Int J Numer Methods Eng 11:1753–1768
Hartmann F (1980) Computing the C-matrix in non-smooth boundary points. In: New developments in boundary element methods, CML Publications, Southampton, pp 367–379
Chen X, Lama YC, Li DQ (2000) Analysis of thermal residual stress in plastic injection molding. J Mater Process Technol 101(1):275–280
Lee EH, Rogers TG (1960) Solution of viscoelastic stress analysis problems using measured creep or relaxation function. J Appl Mech 30(1):127–134
Li Y (1997) Studies in direct tooling using stereolithography. Dissertation, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhou, H., Li, D. Integrated simulation of the injection molding process with stereolithography molds. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 28, 53–60 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-004-2327-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-004-2327-9