Efficiency Research of Conformal Channel Geometries Produced by Additive Manufacturing in Plastic Injection Mold Cores (Inserts) Used in Automotive Industry

Çalışkan, Cemal İrfan; Özer, Gökhan; Koç, Ebubekir; Sarıtaş, Umur Sezer; Yıldız, Coşkun Fırat; Çiçek, Övgü Yağız

doi:10.1089/3dp.2021.0062

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Unlike the straight-drilled channels, 2D simulations cannot represent the thermal and flow behaviors of the cooling process because the CCCs are complex designs with a 3D perspective (see ref. [ 32 ]). Also, the cooling process is a transient process that cannot be analyzed very well via steady-state simulations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metal Additive Manufacturing of Plastic Injection Molds with Conformal Cooling Channels

et al. 2022

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Conformal cooling channels (CCCs) are widely used in the plastic injection molding process to improve the product quality and operational performance. Tooling that incorporates CCCs can be fabricated through metal additive manufacturing (MAM). The present work focuses on the MAM of a plastic injection mold insert with different CCC types that are circular, serpentine, and tapered channels with/without body-centered cubic (BCC) lattices. The entire manufacturing process of the mold insert is explained from the design step to the final printing step including the computational thermal & mechanical simulations, performance assessments, and multiobjective optimization. Compared to the traditional channels, conformal cooling channels achieved up to 62.9% better cooling performance with a better thermal uniformity on the mold surface. The optimum mold geometry is decided using the multiobjective optimization procedure according to the multiple objectives of cooling time, temperature non-uniformity, and pressure drop in the channel. Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) method is used for manufacturing the molds and the quality of the printed molds are analyzed with the X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) technique. The errors between the design and the printed parameters are less than 5% for the circular and tapered channels while the maximum deviation of the strut diameters of the BCC is 0.06 mm.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metal Additive Manufacturing of Plastic Injection Molds with Conformal Cooling Channels

et al. 2022

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“…Metal-based AM technologies can produce geometries that traditional methods cannot produce, thanks to the possibility of different material structures, internal channels for heating or cooling, and embedded sensors present in parts produced in a single step [50,[89][90][91]. Conversely, surface finish and dimensional accuracy are still two major limitations of AM in IM.…”

Section: Indirect Am Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Automotive Spare-Part Reconstruction Based on Additive Manufacturing

Dalpadulo

Petruccioli

Gherardini

et al. 2022

JMMP

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In the Industry 4.0 scenario, additive manufacturing (AM) technologies play a fundamental role in the automotive field, even in more traditional sectors such as the restoration of vintage cars. Car manufacturers and restorers benefit from a digital production workflow to reproduce spare parts that are no longer available on the market, starting with original components, even if they are damaged. This review focuses on this market niche that, due to its growing importance in terms of applications and related industries, can be a significant demonstrator of future trends in the automotive supply chain. Through selected case studies and industrial applications, this study analyses the implications of AM from multiple perspectives. Firstly, various types of AM processes are used, although some are predominant due to their cost-effectiveness and, therefore, their better accessibility and wide diffusion. In some applications, AM is used as an intermediate process to develop production equipment (so-called rapid tooling), with further implications in the digitalisation of conventional primary technologies and the entire production process. Secondly, the additive process allows for on-demand, one-off, or small-batch production. Finally, the ever-growing variety of spare parts introduces new problems and challenges, generating constant opportunities to improve the finish and performance of parts, as well as the types of processes and materials, sometimes directly involving AM solution providers.

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“…The cooling stage plays a vital role. It is not only directly related to the quality of plastic parts, but also indirectly determines the forming cycle of plastic parts, thus affecting the improvement of the whole productivity [2,3] . At present, the cooling method of plastic part is mainly realized by processing cooling channels in the injection mold: the coolant flows in these cooling channels to take away the excess heat, so that the mold temperature can be maintained within the appropriate range, so as to realize the cooling of plastic part.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the in-depth application of 3D printing technology in the mold manufacturing industry, the actual effect and economic value of the conformal cooling channels have been widely recognized [10][11][12] . Now it is not difficult to process the conformal cooling channels, as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on Automatic Generation Technology of Double Helix Shaped conformal cooling channels for Injection Mold

Wang,

Cheng,

Wei

2023

Preprint

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The conformal cooling channel is more and more favored by the mold enterprises because of its excellent cooling performance. However, the current design of conformal cooling channel generally has the problems of complex, time-consuming and error prone design process. The spiral cooling channel is a very important cooling channel structure in injection mold, and its application is extremely common in practical mold engineering cases. For a long time, designers have had to rely on manual construction of spiral cooling channel, which is a cumbersome and inefficient design process. Inspired by the spring structure and based on the design characteristics of spiral cooling channel, this paper puts forward an automatic generation method of conformal cooling channel based on the basic requirements of conformal cooling channel design in engineering practice. The basic idea of this method firstly is to generate the initial trajectory lines and store them in a list in the specified order. Then, based on the initial trajectory line as the basic geometry, a series of control points are generated, and all control points, including the inlet and outlet coordinate points, are sorted. Finally, generate a spline curve based on the control points and scan along the spline curve with the specified cross-section to form cooling channels. Experimental results show that this method can significantly decrease the time of design and guide users to quickly complete the design, while reducing design errors to improve working efficiency.

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Efficiency Research of Conformal Channel Geometries Produced by Additive Manufacturing in Plastic Injection Mold Cores (Inserts) Used in Automotive Industry

Cited by 18 publications

References 48 publications

Metal Additive Manufacturing of Plastic Injection Molds with Conformal Cooling Channels

Metal Additive Manufacturing of Plastic Injection Molds with Conformal Cooling Channels

A Review of Automotive Spare-Part Reconstruction Based on Additive Manufacturing

Research on Automatic Generation Technology of Double Helix Shaped conformal cooling channels for Injection Mold

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