Conformal Cooling Systems Design and Dimensioning for Injection Molds

Abstract

Plastic injection molding is one of the most versatile and widespread manufacturing processes of plastic parts manufacture. Obtaining the final plastic part from the melt thermoplastic material is divided into four main phases: filling, packing, cooling and ejection. The cooling phase is the most representative, since the time related to this phase is the longest. Current conventional machining processes only allow the manufacture of simple cooling systems based on straight drilled channels, which have a low cooling performance in regions of the plastic part with complex geometry. However, with the development of 3D additive manufacturing technologies, the cooling channels can adapt with greater versatility to the plastic part topology in order to achieve the high geometric and functional requirements that the industrial sector demands. In order to evaluate the performance of the conformal type cooling systems, three different configurations have been generated. For the case study the zig-zag, spiral and isocontouring pathing have been defined in order to model the conformal cooling channels that are adapted to its geometry. Through numerical simulations, the results of the cooling time and plastic part temperature after the cooling phase obtained for conformal configurations have been compared. The results obtained show that the conformal cooling channels provide a uniform cooling temperature, reduce the cooling time and improve the productivity of the plastic injection parts manufacturing process.