Electron Beam Fabrication of Injection Mold Tooling with Conformal Cooling Channels

Abstract

Injection molding is the most common mass production process for plastic parts. All thermoplastics and some thermosets can be injection molded to achieve a wide variety of sizes and intricate shapes. Injection molded parts can be found everywhere, from electronics and power tools to appliances and automobiles.

Due to the large impact that injection molding has on the manufacturing industry, companies constantly strive to shorten both cycle and product development time.

Rapid Tooling is a manufacturing technique used to produce injection mold tools in a short period of time. A new process for manufacturing rapid tools is proposed. With the Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process the fabrication of fully dense, net shape tools is now feasible. Using the EBM process, certain features in the mold tool can be optimized such as the cooling system that is of critical importance in the part cycle time of a tool.

A heat transfer simulation study was carried out to find the effect of conformal cooling channels in the heat dissipation within a mold. Extensive experimentation was performed to obtain valuable guidelines for the design of conformal cooling channels in injection molds manufactured via EBM technology.