Nature of contact between polymer and mold in injection molding. Part II: Influence of mold deflection on pressure history and shrinkage

In injection molding of thermoplastic parts, high hold pressures are set during the packing phase to generate a post-filling, which compensates the shrinkage of polymer due to its cooling. The polymer pressure in mold cavity leads to a cavity deformation due to mold and machine compliance. Then, the Increase in cavity thickness can modify the post-filling and consequently the pressure history, the Volumetric shrinkage and the part mass. The first goal of this paper is to present a simple method to locally determine mold rigidities: over-packed slabs are injected and local deflections are determined from measurements of the local residual pressure, the local in-plane shrinkages and the plate thickness. In the studied plate mold, which can be considered as stiff compared to some industrial molds, a rigidity of more than 1 mu m/MPa has been measured close to the center of the plate. The second goal of this paper is to show the influence of mold deflection on dimensional properties. If the cavity thickness is small as for our 1-mm-thick plate mold, considering an infinitely rigid mold cannot do realistic predictions of polymer pressure history, volumetric shrinkages and part mass. Nevertheless, in-plane shrinkage seems to be less affected by mold deflection. It means that the additional polymer mass due to mold deflection is mainly distributed in the part thickness.