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Mold Design & Mold Flow Analysis
Mold Design & Mold Flow Analysis
What is Mold Design?
For thousands of years, molds have been used to form raw materials like clay and metal into art, jewelry, and tools. With modern plastics, software, and manufacturing technologies, it’s possible to cast almost any object from a mold.
Molds for injection molding are made for mass production of quite simple parts and components that can be later assembled to produce complex products. The reason why the parts must be quite simple is that they must be extracted from the mold in which it is made by solidification of the plastified flow injected in.
Injection-molded product design evolves through many phases of development before all the parts are ultimately documented and released to a molder for production. This last step in the development process is the most critical since design changes or corrections can no longer be made without significantly adding cost or project delays.
Unfortunately, plastic part design mistakes will be uncovered only after the first article parts are inspected and evaluated by the project team. Even with today’s sophisticated mold flow simulation, 3D CAD interference checks, rapid prototyping, and numerous other development tools, no one can predict every potential problem for an injection molded part. However, there is a very simple, low-cost method for minimizing potential problems and virtually ensuring perfect parts.
Major design-related parameters affecting injection molded parts:
- Material options and consequences
- Critical tolerances
- Sink marks
- Steel safe areas
- Gate location
- Shut-off angles
- Draft angle orientation
- Texturing and draft
- Scheduling of critical start-up phase
- Secondary operations and fixtures
Mold Flow Analysis (MFA):
Mold flow analysis is the process of simulating an injection molding cycle with a particular plastic and analyzing the results. Mold flow analysis should occur before the injection molding process ever begins, through the use of specialized software that simulates the design of the part to be manufactured.
Since the flow of the liquid material in the mold makes a massive difference to the behavior of the product, this step can save a great deal of effort down the road. This software creates color maps of different properties of the design as they would be reflected in the actual mold flow.
These may include heating/cooling, fill pattern, injection pressure, potential air traps, shear stress, fiber orientation, and many more properties. Mold flow analysis is a careful, hands-on-process meant for experts.
Why Mold Flow Analysis?
By conducting mold flow analysis, manufacturers can get a glimpse into how the material they are using will fill the cavity of a mold, and spot possible problems. Creating a virtual version with mold flow analysis software of the mold before the physical cutting begins allows you to make changes and save on production costs.
These factors will help determine whether MFA is necessary for an application:
- Tolerance requirements – Products with tighter tolerances can benefit from MFA before tooling to make sure you can meet the specifications for tooling design and materials.
- Product geometry – A mold with a more complex shape will likely benefit from mold flow analysis because the flow is less predictable than with a simpler shape.
- The scope of the project – There’s a cost associated with conducting mold flow analysis. The scope of the project should be wide enough to justify spending the money and manpower connected to an MFA.
Benefits of using Mold Flow Analysis:
- It lets you resolve wall thickness issue.
- MFA lets you fill cavities in molds with consistency.
- You can unearth faults in design geometry, and avoid expensive tooling errors. It also gives you more support if you need to make a case for design changes to your client.
- You’ll improve manufacturability, improve quality and efficiency, and reduce time to market.
- Mold flow analysis lets you uncover visual defects such as air traps, weld lines, and sink marks, and allows you to optimize gate location.
- Another key benefit is using the program to predict generalized molding parameters allowing for efficient set-up during the trial phase.
At Maxellence Engineering Technologies we have mold design experts who can design parts for injection molders. Our team of experts performs mold flow analysis to help you ace your manufacturing process efficiently and effectively.