Research on the reduction of sink mark and warpage of the molded part in rapid heat cycle molding process

Rapid heat cycle molding (RHCM) is a recently developed innovative injection molding technology to enhance the surface quality of the plastic parts without extending the molding cycle. Most of the common defects that occur in the plastic parts produced by conventional injection molding (CIM), such as flow mark, silver mark, jetting mark, weld mark, exposed fibers, short shot, etc., can be well solved by RHCM. However, RHCM is not a nostrum for all the defects in injection molding. Sink mark and warpage are two major defects occurring in RHCM. The purpose of this study is to investigate and further solve the sink mark and warpage of the molded parts in RHCM. To solve the problem of sink mark, a new “bench form” structure for the screw stud on the product coupling with a lifter structure for the injection mold was proposed. The external gas assisted packing was also proposed to reduce the sink mark in RHCM. To solve the problem of warpage, design of experiments via Taguchi methods were performed to systematically investigate the effect of processing parameters including melt temperature, injection time, packing pressure, packing time and also cooling time on the warpage. Injection molding simulations based on Moldflow were conducted to acquire the warpages of the plastic parts produced under different processing conditions. A signal to noise analysis was conducted to analyze the effect of the factors, and the optimal processing parameters were also found out. ANOVA was also conducted to quantitatively analyze the percentage contributions of the processing parameters on the warpage. The verification results show that part warpage can be reduced effectively based on the optimal design results.

► The proposed “bench form” structure for the screw studs can significantly reduce sink marks of the RHCM products.
► The external gas assisted packing is a very effective method to reduce the sink marks of the molded parts in RHCM.
► Packing pressure control plays the most significant role for reducing part warpage in rapid heat cycle molding.
► The optimum processing conditions for minimizing warpage of the LCD TV front shell in RHCM is obtained by Taguchi method.