Mold 3D printing shortens the cooling time of injection molded products by 68%?
For an injection molded product, its molding cycle is affected by many factors, such as: filling time, holding time, sol time, mold opening and closing time, but the longest and most important one is cooling. time.
We know that the biggest advantage of the application of 3D printing technology in traditional molds is: shortening the cooling time and improving the product yield. According to research, the cooling time of 3D printing molds has been shortened by about 30%-50% on average, and some of them even exceeded 60%. Today, the editor will share with you a product case that shortened the cooling time by 68%.
Case Studies
An electronic plastic product for a certain customer, from the 3D model drawing, we can easily find that the difficulty of the product design scheme lies in:
- · Due to the appearance requirements of the customer’s product, the glue inlet needs to be hidden and the cold runner inverted processing method is adopted.
- · The wall thickness of the customer’s product is up to 3mm.
- · The product head has a deep cavity and a small diameter, which makes it impossible for ordinary machining to make the water path of the back mold insert go deep into the glue position.
- · As a result, the temperature of the glue position is relatively high, and the cooling time is long, which may easily cause burns to the parts.
Through mold flow analysis, we record: the time for the mold to reach the ejection temperature of the common scheme is 24.98s
Conformal waterway scheme
Then the 3D printing engineer finds out the hot spot of the product-the glue position part through the preliminary mold flow analysis, so as to design the 3D printing scheme for the hot spot.
The 3D printing solution shows that we have basically solved the user’s difficulties:
- · The waterway of the back mold insert goes deep into the glue position of the product.
- · Follow the shape of the waterway around the round frame mouth to be close to the edge respectively.
- · Use mold 3D printing special powder to ensure the strength of the workpiece.
The program is completed, we conduct mold flow analysis through a fast mold flow analyst, and record the time for the mold to reach the ejection temperature as 7.92s
From 24.98s to 7.92s, the mold cooling time has been shortened by nearly 17s, reaching 68%. If you have such an increase, you can borrow an online celebrity phrase “Isn’t it fragrant, what a bicycle?” Of course, the mold 3D printing advantage It is not only reflected in the cooling time, but also the mold temperature and the temperature of the parts have been greatly improved.
Many years ago, the slow-moving wire machine tool was a luxury in the mold factory, and now the slow-moving wire machine tool has become the standard configuration of the factory. With the rapid development of science and technology, modern mold making technology has a high level of efficiency, precision, quality and other aspects that are not what it used to be. 3D printing technology may provide a great help to improve the entire production process of traditional enterprises and enhance business strategies. .
