Injection moulding, 'C-MOLD' CAE package, process parameter design and quality function deployment: A case study of intelligent materials processing

The operations of: (1) Plastic Product Design; (2) Injection Mould Design; (3) Injection Processing; and (4) Quality Control; are separate tasks carried out by different entities. Poor communication and misunderstanding often cause a lot of quality problems. The framework and the tools for engineers to focus on the important quality characteristics and their factors are critical. The complete framework of tools should be able to link, to prioritize, to optimize and to improve the outputs of the four tasks. C-MOLD is an advanced CAE simulation package linking and optimizing the outputs of tasks (1), (2) and(3). It is a 7-moduled program derived from the CIMP-FLOW 3D Research Program. Taguchi's Parameter Design links and optimizes the outputs of tasks (2), (3), and (4). In this paper, an L(27) orthogonal array was constructed and seven injection process parameters were tested for a circular plate. ANOVAs were carried out and different settings for optimization were generated. To achieve Customer Satisfaction, a further linking and prioritization is required amongst the outputs of tasks (3), (4) and (1). Quality Function Deployment was applied, this final linkage completing the intelligent framework to produce quality plastic components.