A Study on Storing Process of Thermoforming Using Finite Difference Method

Obtaining a uniform thickness of the final product using thermoforming is difficult, and the thickness distribution depends strongly on the distribution of the sheet temperature. In this paper, the time-dependent temperature distribution of the total sheets in the storing process was studied because the temperature after the storing process is the initial temperature of the preheating process. An analysis code for simulating the storing process was developed under the condition that the thermal conductivity caused by contact resistance between sheets was assumed as a large value. In this study, the number of sheets in the storing room was adjusted for finding out the effect of it. The analysis results show that maximum temperature difference between sheets was significantly different when adjusting the number of sheets in the storing room. The temperature distribution of the total sheets and the method for analysis in this study will be used to optimize the storing process for higher quality of final products.