Date of Award

8-1-2017

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Quality Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Dunston, Julie

Abstract

Injection molding is one of the most common methods of mass production. After injecting molten plastic into a mold, the heat must leave the plastic material, enter the mold steel, enter the coolant, and exit the mold. This heat flow is critical to producing high quality parts rapidly. As plastic cools, the plastic shrinks. Uneven cooling causes uneven shrinkage which can cause the part to warp from the resulting internal stresses or create sink marks on the part. Thus the effect of uneven cooling is lower part quality, both in appearance and in dimension. Standard or conventional cooling channels are straight-drilled holes arranged such that they intersect and connect to form a loop for coolant, typically water, to flow through. This allows the mold to act as a heat exchanger, transferring heat to the coolant and carrying heated coolant away from the mold. While standard cooling channels have been used widely in the injection molding industry for their manufacturability and proven results, other methods have been developed for creating molds with cooling channels of any desired path or shape. These channels, called conformal due to how they conform to the shape of the part, provide uniform cooling, eliminate or reduce the quality issues of warpage and shrinkage, and provide faster, more economical cycle times. Conformal cooling is cannot be produced only by subtractive manufacturing methods that remove material from raw stock but rather through additive or hybrid manufacturing techniques that add material in layers of powder, sections, or sheets. Bonded sheet layer mold inserts can be made of any size and are currently the only feasible way of making large, conformally-cooled molds. Presented is a Six Sigma approach for implementing conformal cooling in existing molds to achieve the benefits of higher part quality and fast cycle times. Feasibility considerations include existing mold features such as slides and ejectors, choice of channel diameter, and the cooling channel path. Cost justification considerations include assessing part quality cost impact through calculation of the costs of poor quality and assessing machine capacity as relates to cycle time. With the approach presented, an injection molding company should be able to assess feasibility and cost effectiveness of implementing conformal cooling on its molds.

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