Filling balance optimization for plastics injection molding

Abstract

The quality of an injection molded part is strongly influenced by the filling balance of the mold cavity. Gate location is the principal balance factor and it heavily depends on designer’s experience and knowledge. In this paper, a three-step method is proposed which aims at determining the gate location that maximizes the filling balance of a mold cavity. First numerical simulations of the filling process are run changing gate position opportunely. Then third order regression surface method is applied to determine the gate location which minimizes the filling times standard deviation of the mesh nodes located along the cavity boundaries. The proposed method can be used for single gated mold cavities or multiple gated ones where the gates are positioned symmetrically. The results obtained from an industrial case study highlighted the effectiveness of the proposed approach in finding the optimal gate location by a restricted number of simulations.