Induction heating with the ring effect for injection molding plates

Induction heating in injection molding has the advantages of rapid heating, reduced cycle time, and improved product quality. In this research, using both experiment and simulation, externally wrapped coil induction heating was applied to verify the heating capacity of a pair of mold plates. By applying different coil designs and mold gap, the effect of the externally wrapped coil induction heating was evaluated. Results showed that when a serial coil was used as an inductor, the heating rate reached 8.0 °C/s. From an initial mold temperature of 40 °C, after 15 s heating, the mold surface temperature reached 159.9 °C with the serial coil. The parallel coil shows a better heating uniformity but its heating rate is far lower than the serial coil. For the serial coil, the temperature distribution between the core and cavity plate are almost the same. The heating rate increases from 4.9 °C/s to 10.6 °C/s when the inductor design is changed from 5 turns to 7 turns. After 15 s heating, the temperature at point T2 increases from 40 °C to 166.7 °C and 106.1 °C with a mold gap of 1 mm, and 6 mm, respectively.