Relationship Of Shear Histroy, Morphology – Microstructure And Mechanical Properties Of Micro Injection Molded Parts
The relationship of shear history, morphologymicrostructure and mechanical properties of the microscale parts was investigated based on the polypropylene parts with thickness 0.2mm and 0.5mm molded under varied injection speed. Shear rate was analyzed using Moldflow. 0.5 mm parts showed skin-core structure in the thickness direction with imperfect shish-kebab structure appeared in the transition layer between skin layer and core layer, however, the transition layer of 0.2 mm parts shows columnar crystal. The whole shear level in shear history increased with injection speed increasing for all the parts with two thicknesses. The ratio of skin layer of 0.5 mm parts decreased as the injection speed increased, which result in the decreasing of yield stress, modulus, breaking strength and elongation at break. The ratio of skin layer of 0.2 mm parts increased with injection speed increasing, and results in increasing of yield stress, modulus and breaking strength, and decreasing of elongation at break.
Relevant Aspects in Modeling of Micro‐injection Molding
Growing demands in the manufacturing of micro and precision components in plastics require new concepts for molding machines and micro molds on the one hand. On the other hand, a deeper understanding of the filling and solidification process in a micro mold is indispensable. In this work, the filling process of a micro spiral was analyzed by modeling the compressible flow using pressure dependent viscosity and adjusted heat transfer coefficients. At the same time, experimental filling studies were carried out on an accurately controlled micro‐injection molding machine. Based on the relationship between the injection pressure and the filling degree, essential factors for the quality of the simulation can be identified. It can be shown that the flow behavior of the melt in a micro cavity of high aspect ratio is extremely dependent on the melt compressibility in the injection cylinder which needs to be considered in the simulation in order to predict an accurate flow rate. Moreover, the heat transfer coefficients between the melt and the mold wall vary significantly when changing cavity thickness and processing conditions. It is believed that a pressure dependent model for the heat transfer coefficient would be able to improve the quality of the process simulation.
Micro-injection moulding: Factors affecting the achievable aspect ratios
Micro-injection moulding is one of the key technologies for micro-manufacture because of its mass-production capability and relatively low component cost. The aspect ratios achievable in replicating micro features are one of the most important process characteristics and constitute a major manufacturing constraint in applying injection moulding in a range of micro-engineering applications. This research studies the effects of five process and one size factors on the achievable aspect ratios, and the role they play in producing micro components in different polymer materials. In particular, the following factors are considered: barrel temperature, mould temperature, injection speed, holding pressure, the existence of air evacuation and the sizes of micro features. The study revealed that the barrel temperature and the injection speed are the key factors affecting the aspect ratios of micro features replicated in PP and ABS. In case of POM, in addition to these two factors, the mould temperature is also an important factor for improving the replication capabilities of the micro-injection moulding process. For all three materials, an increase of feature sizes improves the melt flow. However, the melt fill of micro features does not increase linearly with the increase of their sizes.