J.-H. Tzou (Taiwan)
Injection Mold; Taguchi's Method. In recent years, Rapid Tooling (RT) has become increasingly important because of the high demand of rapid molds. RT can be defined as the use of rapid prototyping as a tooling pattern for the purposes of molding production materials, or the direct production of a tool from the rapid prototyping system. RT can be used to produce temporary molds as well as permanent molds in mass production. RT provides more benefits from the design stage to mass producti
The objective of this paper is to develop a Direct Meta llic Rapid Too ling System for ma nufa cturi ng the injectio n mold. A 2.5KW Nd-YAG laser sy stem, a metallic powder feeder s ystem, a later al powder no zzle system, a PC-based motion controller, and a shielding gas supply s ystem a re inco rpo ra ted for the hardw are archit ecture in t he pro posed RT Syst em. The critical process parameters inf luencing t he dimensio nal accuracy of the RT part s were analyzed with Taguchi’s experiment al design. Fro m the ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) comput ational result s, the factors “Scanning speed” and “Tool path offset” are the influential factors affecting the layer t hickness of RT part s. Fro m the experimenta l results , the pro posed RT system could fabrica te the mold inserts. Af ter f inishing the mold insert s and assembling the plena ry injection mold, t he injection molding machine ca n generat e ABS plast ic parts wi th excellent qua lity.
Important Links:
Go Back
