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Conformal Mold Heating and Cooling Using a Carbon Nanotube Film Heater and Additively Manufactured Cellular Metamaterial

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Abstract

In injection molding, the mold temperature needs to be controlled carefully not only to improve part quality but also to reduce cycle time. To fulfill these objectives, an energy-efficient mold heating and cooling technology is proposed to obtain conformal temperature control of mold surfaces. For conformal mold heating, a carbon nanotube (CNT) film heater was prepared and installed in a curved mold by maintaining a uniform distance from the mold surface, and its conformal heating capability was investigated numerically and experimentally. To improve the heating capability by preventing energy loss, an additively manufactured cellular metamaterial was placed beneath the CNT film heater, which played the role of a thermal insulator. For conformal and rapid mold cooling, this cellular metamaterial acts as a heat exchanger by circulating a coolant through the porous space of the cellular structure. The combinational use of the CNT film heater and cellular metamaterial ensures uniform temperature change on the mold surface during the thermal cycle by maintaining the temperature deviation within ± 6 °C during the heating stage and ± 0.3 °C during the cooling stage. Considering that this temperature uniformity is superior to the previous mold heating technologies, such as steam or induction heating, the proposed conformal mold heating and cooling technology can be used to improve part quality and productivity in various molding processes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Technology Innovation Program grant (Grant no: 20004272) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Republic of Korea, and a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant (Grant no.: 2019R1A2C1002799) funded by the by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea. The authors also thank to Prof. Sung-Hoon Park at Soongsil University, Korea, for his support with the fabrication of CNT web films.

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  1. Department of Mechanical System Design Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, 232 Gongneung-ro, Nowon-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Jeong-Hee You, Jun-Won Lee, Seo-Hyeon Oh & Keun Park

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  1. Jeong-Hee You
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  2. Jun-Won Lee
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Correspondence to Keun Park.

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You, JH., Lee, JW., Oh, SH. et al. Conformal Mold Heating and Cooling Using a Carbon Nanotube Film Heater and Additively Manufactured Cellular Metamaterial. Int. J. of Precis. Eng. and Manuf.-Green Tech. 9, 1463–1476 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-021-00407-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40684-021-00407-7

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