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Cooling efficiency enhancement using a rapid tool with a surface-cooled waterfall cooling channel

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Abstract

The manufacturing technique known as investment casting has found extensive application in producing metal components featuring intricate geometries. The production efficiency of the wax patterns is an essential issue in the investment casting industry, especially for the mass production of wax patterns. A conformal cooling channel (CCC) performs the rapid uniform cooling process for injection molding. However, the significant pressure drop along the cooling channels is a distinct disadvantage of CCC. In this study, an innovative waterfall cooling channel (WCC) was proposed and implemented. The WCC cools the injected products by surface contact, replacing the conventional line contact to cool the injected products. The WCC was optimized using Moldex3D simulation software. Rapid tools with two kinds of cooling channels were designed and implemented. The cooling time of the molded part was investigated using a low-pressure wax injection molding machine. Considering a water cup characterized by a mouth diameter of 70 mm, a height of 60 mm, and a thickness of 2 mm, the experimental results confirmed that the use of WCC can save the cooling time of the product by about 265 s compared with the CCC. This result shows that the WCC can increase cooling efficiency by approximately 17.47% compared with conventional CCC.

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Funding

This study received financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under contract nos. NSTC 111–2221-E-131–015-MY2, MOST 110–2221-E-131–023, and MOST 109–2637-E-131–004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ming Chi University of Technology, No. 84, Gungjuan Road, New Taipei City, 24301, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo, Pin-Han Lin, Jing-Yan Xu, Zhe-Xhi Lin, Zi-Huan Wang & Zhi-Jun Lai

  2. Research Center for Intelligent Medical Devices, Ming Chi University of Technology, No. 84, Gungjuan Road, New Taipei City, 24301, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chang Gung University, No.259, Wenhua 1St Rd., Guishan Dist., Taoyuan City, 33302, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo

  4. Center for Reliability Engineering, Ming Chi University of Technology, No. 84, Gungjuan Road, Taishan District, New Taipei City, 24301, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo

  5. Li-Yin Technology Co., Ltd., No. 37, Lane 151, Section 1, Zhongxing Road, Wugu District, New Taipei City, 241, Taiwan

    Song-Hua Huang

Authors
  1. Chil-Chyuan Kuo
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  2. Pin-Han Lin
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  4. Zhe-Xhi Lin
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Contributions

Chil-Chyuan Kuo wrote the paper, conceived and designed the analysis, and performed the analysis. Pin-Han Lin, Jing-Yan Xu, Zhe-Xhi Lin, Zi-Huan Wang, Zhi-Jun Lai, and Song-Hua Huang collected the data and contributed data or analysis tools.

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Correspondence to Chil-Chyuan Kuo.

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Kuo, CC., Lin, PH., Xu, JY. et al. Cooling efficiency enhancement using a rapid tool with a surface-cooled waterfall cooling channel. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 132, 1127–1136 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-024-13429-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-024-13429-7

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