Product Development of Electrical Appliance in Injection Molding Process with the Application of Computer-Aided Modeling (CAM) and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE)

Abstract

Injection molding is common manufacturing process that produces thermoplastic products by injecting molten plastic into a mold that emulates the product’s geometry. The product is ejected from the mold by ejector once it has solidified. This paper presents the study of thermoplastic injection molding process simulation and mold design of electrical appliance. The objective of this study is to reveal the important steps for plastic product development. In addition, it presents the requirement analysis on the part to simulate the important parameters specifically at the mold. The process of manufacturing plastic part begins with the part’s sketching, drawing, modeling and analysis followed by mold design and simulation. A 3-Pin Plug was selected as a case study. The mold with four cavities was designed for the mold. The straight in line cooling channel was included in the mold to offer higher heat transfer co-efficient. Injection molding process parameters were simulated in terms of filling time, plastic flow, injection pressure, average temperature and air traps. The results revealed that it has smooth flow with the filling time up to 0.5394 s. The highest average temperature and pressure recorded were 323.1 °C and 23.77 MPa, respectively. It recorded a very little air traps that probably occur in the product. In short, the development of the 3-Pin Plug with its mold design is promising with the supports and results produced from the simulation. It is recommended to study the cooling effects by replacing current conventional cooling with conformal cooling channel in mold design.