Universidad Carlos III

Aerospace Design I
Aerospace Engineering Department

Homework I
Plastic Mold Design

Authors:
Gemma Aguado Cuadrado

Carlos Alvaro
Arroyo Parejo
Isaac Ramses Buitrago Ramos
Icar Martn Mejas
Carlos Serrano Laborda

Course 2015/2016

Supervisor:
Jose Daz

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Aerospace Design I

Contents
1 Introduction

2 Final Design

3 Direct Material Cost

4 Injection Mold
4.1 Feed system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Cooling system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 Ejection system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5
5
6
8

5 Loss of pressure in the feed system

11

6 Time
12
6.1 To fill the mold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.2 To cool down the piece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7 Forces of the Injection Mold
14
7.1 Force of the Clamping Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.2 Force of the Ejection System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

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Aerospace Design I

Abstract
The goal of this homework is to develop an injection mold for a spoon
made of ABS cycolac. Getting a maximum production rate will be considered
as the main objective. In the design of the injection mold several requirements
and conditions must be fulfilled: lower cost production, feed system, ejection
system, clamping mechanism and cooling system, will be the determinant
aspects in design of the mold. Moreover, several assumptions will be made
since there is no unique solution for the designing of the mold.

Introduction

Injection molding is a manufacturing process in which a polymer is heated to a

highly plastic state and forced to flow under high pressure into a mold cavity, where
it solidifies. It is the most widely used molding process for thermoplastics.
The injection molding machine, also known as an injection press can be hydraulic,
electric or mechanical and consists of two main parts, an injection unit and a clamping unit. The clamping unit provides the required pressure to keep the mold closed,
then the plastic is carried from the injection unit to the mold which is filled thanks
to a system of sprues and runners. Finally, when the sprue, the runners and the
part have solidify, the whole system is ejected.
The main advantages of this manufacturing process are a high production rate, typically in the range 10 to 30 seconds, low labor costs, high tolerances are repeatable, a
wide range of materials can be used and it is appropriated to manufacture complex
and intricate shapes. However, it requires an expensive equipment investment and
the parts must be designed with molding considerations.

Figure 1: Injection machine

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Aerospace Design I

Final Design

The original design of the spoon, as it can be observed in figure 2, consists on a

rectangular geometry with sharp edges and a variable thickness in order to satisfy its
main task, which is to pick foodstuff. In order reduce the appearance of defects and
to optimize the time spent to fill the mold and to cool down the system, that would
imply an increase in the production rate, the geometry of the spoon is modified.

Figure 2: Original geometry of the spoon

The modifications for the new design have to take into account that the rough
dimensions of the spoon should be kept constant and its functionality together with
the capacity that the piece of cutlery picks have to been preserved. For the final
design of the spoon the thickness of the spoon is kept constant and the edges and
corners are eliminated to reduce the accumulation of stresses and avoid the most
typical defects associated with this kind of manufacturing process, such as shrinkage,
warpage or air traps.

Figure 3: Final design

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Aerospace Design I

Figure 4: Dimensions of the spoon

In figure 3 it can be observed with details the final dimensions and geometry of the
spoon. As it was mentioned before, the length and width for the new design are
more or less kept the same. Moreover, its capacity is almost the same in order to
keep constant the volume which may be contained.

Direct Material Cost

The material cost is calculated taking into account the total mass of plastic used
for one injection cycle. As it will be explained in section 4 of this report, one
injection cycle consists of the production of 8 spoons. Moreover the amount of mass
through runners must be considered. The feed system is composed of one sprue and
8 secondary runners, one for each spoon, as it will be detailed later.
Total mass of plastic= 0.0526 kg
Since the cost of material is equal to 2.16 $ /Kg then:
Total material cost per cycle=$0.12

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Aerospace Design I

Injection Mold

4.1

Feed system

The first issue to take into account is to decide whether the system is going to work
with hot or cold runners. In general terms, the main difference is that hot runners
require an extra device inside the mold able to keep the runner above the melting
temperature of the material injected, whereas the cold runners do not include it.
The main reasons why a cold runner configuration has been chosen are: cheaper
mold design and maintenance costs, additionally with the possibility of change the
type of polymer used.
The feeding system consists of a principal tube which is attached in the top to the
injection system plus 8 smaller channels that connect the principal one to the spoons.
The first model studied contained 4 subsystems of 8 spoons (which means 32 spoons
at a time), but it did not result to be efficient in terms of feeding time; the most
effective configuration turned out to be the one that was finally chosen.
The dimensions of the principal channel are: Lp.c. = 520mm and Dp.c. = 8.5mm,
and the dimensions of the spoon runners are: Ls. = 20mm and Ds. = 3mm.
The main considerations to take into account in order to design the feeding system
are the following:
Maintain the same linear velocity through the channels:
Dupstream
Ddownstream =
ndownstream

(1)

The diameter of the spoon channels is fixed and equal to 3 mm (to be consistent
with the thickness of the spoons).
The maximum height is fixed and equal to 520 mm (to be consistent with the
mold dimensions).
The maximum pressure loss admitted by the feeding system is 50 MPa:
P =

8melt LV melt
R4

(2)

where melt = 2250poise = 225P a s.

The first parameter computed is the diameter of the principal channel, by applying

the
formula
of
conservation
of
linear
velocity:
D
=
D
ndownstream =
upstream
downstream

8 3 = 8.5mm.
Once all the dimensions of the feeding system are known, the next step is to determine a proper volume rate, which as the formula shows, is directly related to the
pressure loss, as it is explained in section 5 of this report.

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Aerospace Design I

Figure 5: Dimensions of the lower mold

Figure 6: Dimensions of the upper mold

4.2

Cooling system

The injected material loses temperature in the contact with the mold surfaces,transferring
itself heat through the mold. In order to speed the cooling process, specific holes in
the adjacent surfaces of the molded part in the mold must be designed. These holes
are known as lines of water, since water is the most typical coolant used in these
cases.
In order to optimize the design of the cooling system, several aspects must be considered:
Cooling channels should be positioned symmetrically. There can be sufficient
number of independent circuits to ensure uniform temperature along the mold
surface. Since our mold has a circular shape, the cooling system must adapt
to this shape.

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Aerospace Design I

The whole cooling system of the mold should have an adequate number of
cooling channels of suitable size at equal distance from each other and from
cavity walls. The diameter chosen for the lines of water has been 15 mm taking
into account the dimensions of our mold.
Cooling channels should be as close as possible to the mold cavity / core surfaces. The distance of cooling channel from mold surface should be permissible
by the strength of mold steel against possible failure under clamp and injection
forces. In our case, a distance of 1.2 times the diameter of the cooling lines
has been chosen. In this case since the diameter of the cooling lines is 15 mm,
the distance between the lines and the runners is 18 mm.
The difference between the inlet and outlet water temperature should be no
more than 1o C for precision molding.
Taking all these considerations into account, the cooling system that has been designed is composed of three lines of water:one spiral to cool down the principal runner and the part of the mold around it and two circular lines of
water taking into account the circular distribution of the spoons and the secondary
runners.
Line 1: it consists of a spiral defined by an helix turn of 538.4 mm and a length
of 1615 mm. Its diameter is 15 mm, and it is located at a lateral distance of
18 mm of the principal runner (the one of length 520mm).
Line 2: it consists of a circular line of water of radius 55 mm following the
shape of the feeding system. Its radius is 15 mm and it is located at a distance
of 18 mm above the spoons and secondary runners.
Line 3: it consists of a circular line of water of radius 55 mm following the
shape of the feeding system. Its radius is 15 mm and it is located at a distance
of 18 mm below the spoons and secondary runners.
Let us show some calculations to justify the election of this design. The first thing
that we have done is to calculate the total heat that must be dissipated. To simplify
calculations, it is assumed that this value corresponds to the heat dissipated only
in the plastic material (runners and spoons). The heat dissipated in the remaining
mold is included by applying a safety factor of 4.
Qmoldtotal = 4 mplastic Cp,plastic (Tmelt Teject ) = 78300 J

(3)

where:
mplastic is the total mass of plastic (principal runner+secondary runners+spoons)=0.0526
kg
Cp,plastic is the specific heat transfer of the plastic =2340 J/kgo C
Tmelt is the melting temperature of the plastic, selected to be equal to 218 o C
(See section 6.2 of the report for more information)

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Aerospace Design I

Teject is the ejection temperature of the pieces= 59 o C

On the other hand the cooling power corresponds to:
Qmold
= 889.77W
Q cool =
tcool

(4)

where tc = 88s is the cooling time, calculated in section 6.2 of this report. And the
cooling power per line, assuming three lines of water is:
Q cool
= 296.59W
Q line =
nlines

(5)

The temperature heating of the water must be no more than 1o C, so that this limit
has been imposed to the following equation in order to get the volumetric flow rate.

Tcoolant =

Q line
= 1o C

Vcool cool Cp,cool

(6)

where:
cool =1kg/dm3
Cp,cool =4184 J/kg o C
Therefore, the volumetric flow rate V cool =7.09105 m3 /s
A turbulent flow must be guaranteed so the Reynolds number must be greater than
4000. In this case:
4cool V cool
= 10824 > 4000
(7)
Re =
Dcool
where cool =0.000556 kg/s*m
The pressure looses per cooling line are computed as follows:
PcoolingLine =

2
cool Lline V cool
10D5

(8)

Spiral cooling line for principal runner (Lspiralcoolline =1615 mm): 329 Pa
Circular cooling lines for secondary runners and spoons (Lcircularcoolline =2
55 mm): 73 Pa
In real life the pressure losses are normally around 0.5 to 2 bar, which is much higher
than the values obtained. This is due to the idealization of the problem.

4.3

Ejection system

The ejection system of the injection mold machine consist of an ejecting rod and
plate eject the finished piece from the mold and ejector pins. The dimensions of
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Aerospace Design I

the ejection system are closed related with the force required by the ejection system
which is explained in the Section 7.2 of this homework since the dimensions should
fulfill several requirements depending on the force of ejection and the force exerted
by each of the pins.
The requirements in order to select a correct dimensions of the ejector system, i.e.
the dimensions of the ejector pins, are summed up in the following lines.
Aejectors >

Feject
fatigue limit

(9)

where
Aejectors is the total area of the ejection system, i.e. the compression area of
the eight ejector pins.
Feject is the force of ejection done by the system, i.e. the force done by the eight
ejector pins. This force has been calculated in section 7.2 of this homework
being Feject = 1947.10 N
fatigue limit is the fatigue limit of the material this value is provided
fatigue limit = 690 MPa.
Thus, the first condition that must be satisfied is that
Aejector > 2.822 106 m2

(10)

The second condition that needs to be required is:

Fpin
plastic material
2Fpin
Fpin
=
<
Ashear = Dpin h >
(11)
part =
Ashear
Dpin h
2
plastic material
where
Fpin is the force exerted by each ejector pin and it has been calculated in
Section 7.2 of this homework. Fpin = 243.38 N.
Dpin is the diameter of each ejector pin and will be choose in the final part of
this section, in order to fulfill the requirements shown.
h is the thickness of the plastic that has to withstand the force exerted by the
pin. h = 3 mm.
plastic material is the yield strength of the ABS cycolac which is provided being
plastic material = 44 MPa.
Hence,
Ashear = Dpin h >

2Fpin

plastic material
Finally the last requirement to be fulfilled is
pin =

Fpin
Acompression

= 1.1063 105 m2

(12)

Fpin
2E
Fpin
<

=
Acompression >
buckling
2
2
Dpin
(0.7Lpin /Rpin )
buckling
4
(13)
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Aerospace Design I

where
Acompression is the cross sectional area of each pin.
E is the Youngs modulus of the plastic material. E = 2280 MPa.
Lp in is the length of the pin that will be selected (as Dpin ) in the next lines.
Rpin is the radius of each ejector pin, i.e.

Dpin
.
2

Acording with the dimensions of the injection mold and the final dimensions of the
spoon the values for the lenght and the diameter of the cylindrical ejector pin is the
following:
Lpin = 200 mm
Dpin = 6 mm

(14)
(15)

Using this values in order to check the previous requirements it is obtained the
following:
Acompression =

0.0062
Fpin
= 2.817 105 m2 >
=
4
buckling

243.38
2 2280106

= 2.3553 105 m2 X

(0.70.35/0.003)2

(16)
Ashear = Dpin h = 5.6549 105 m2 >

2Fpin
plastic material

= 1.1063 105 m2 X
(17)

Aejectors = 8 Acompression = 1.88424 104 m2 >

Feject
fatigue limit

= 2.822 106 m2 X
(18)

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Aerospace Design I

Loss of pressure in the feed system

The loss of pressure in the feed system should not increase the value of 50 MPa,
so this restraint has to be taken into account when designing the mold since this
value depends on parameters such as, the volumetric flow rate, the length of the
feed system and its radius according with the following formula:
PF eedSystem =

8melt LV melt
R4

(19)

where:
melt is the apparent viscosity at melting temperature
L is the length of the feed system
V melt is the volumetric flow rate
R is the radius of the feed system
In order to simplify the design of the mold, the variation of pressure P is kept at
its maximum value, 50MPa. Then the value of the apparent viscosity is fixed
at 225 Pas, which is inside the range of typical values associated with apparent
viscosities. Finally, with the dimensions of the feed system, the volumetric flow rate
is computed.
Dimensions of the main channel (sprue):
Length = 520mm
Radius = 4.25mm
Dimensions of the sec. channels (runners):
Length = 20mm
Radius = 1.5mm
8 225 Pa s
50 MPa =

0.52m
8 0.02m
+
4
0.00425m
0.0015m4

V melt

(20)

melt =2.628106 m3 /s
With the previous formula the volumetric flow rate is calculated, V

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Aerospace Design I

Time

6.1

To fill the mold

Once the volume rate is known, the feeding time can be computed by using the
following formula:
Vtotal
tf eeding =
(21)
V melt
where Vtotal refers to the volume of material that is going to solidify, which is the
sum of the spoons plus the small channels (the reason why the channels are also
filled is to avoid defects in the spoons due to solidification such as shrinkage).
Then: tf eeding =

6.2

8(0.00152 +5.433108 )
2.628106

= 21.7s.

To cool down the piece

The main phases in an injection molding process involve filling, cooling and ejection.
The cooling phase is a significant step among the three. It determines the rate at
which the parts are produced. In the moment of the melted polymer injection,
ideally, the molds temperature should be like of the melted polymers temperature
and in the moment of the parts removal the mold must be to the temperature of
the environment. Of this way, the polymer would be injected with the minimum
of pressure and the difference between the surface temperature and the nucleus
temperature of the injected parts would be a minimum leading as low cooling and
minimizing the molding stresses.
In order to perform an estimation of the cooling time, equations 8 and 9 will be
used. The first one will be used to estimate cooling time of a spoon assuming it is
a strip. The second one will be used to do the same for the runners of the feeding
system.
tcooling

tcooling

h2
= 2 ln

4 Tmelt Tcoolant
Teject Tcoolant



D2
Tmelt Tcoolant
=
ln 0.692
23.1
Teject Tcoolant

(22)

(23)

where:
h is the thickness of the piece: 3103 m
D is the diameter of a portion of the feed system. In this case, the diameter
of the principal runner is chosen since it is the highest value: 8.5103 m

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Tcoolant is the coolant temperature: must be between 49o C and 71o C

Teject is the temperature at which the piece is ejected: 59o C
Tmelt is the melting temperature of the material used: must be between 218o C
and 260o C
is the thermal diffusivity: 8.73108 m2 /s
Cooling time is about 50 to 75% of the total cycle time. Therefore, optimizing
cooling time for best performance is very important from quality and productivity
point of view. Taking this into account what is desired is to minimize the ratio of
temperatures inside the logarithm, so the numerator has to be as small as possible
and the denominator has to be as high as feasible.
Taking into account this consideration, the coolant temperature is selected. Since
the ejection temperature is fixed, and equal to 59o C, the coolant temperature should
be lower than this value to avoid singularities. The minimum value has been selected
for the coolant, that is 49o C.
On the other hand, the minimum melting temperature, 218o C, has been also chosen
to perform the calculations since this value is the one that minimizes the temperature
ratio once the coolant temperature is fixed.
Finally, the cooling time of the spoon for one injection cycle is tcooling =32 s.
On the other hand, the cooling time of the feeding system for one injection
cycle is tcooling =88 s. Therefore the total cooling time of one cycle is 88
seconds. This makes sense since the cooling time must be higher than the injection
time.

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Aerospace Design I

Forces of the Injection Mold

The forces that actuate during the manufacturing of the piece are fundamental in
order to develop and design a proper injection mold that can support these forces. In
other words, the injection mold must support the force due to the injection pressure
produced during the injection of the plastic material and keep the plastic liquid in
the mold cavity until the plastic material solidifies, and also must produce the force
necessary to eject the piece not only to separate the piece from the mold cavity
but, for instance, to break the injection channels that are joined to the piece, and
this ejection process must be done nor damaging the material neither producing
significant structural deformation on the piece.
In order to analyze the forces required in the design of the injection mold, two main
features are going to be considered: on one hand the force required for the clamping
unit in order to keep the two halves of the mold correctly touch together, and on the
other hand the force produced by the ejection pins of the ejection system in order
to separate the spoon from the cavity mold.

7.1

Force of the Clamping Unit

The clamping units main function is to open and close the mold along with ejecting
the parts. The clamping unit is responsible for holding the two halves of the mold
in proper alignment with each other, must keep the mold closed during the injection
process by applying a force at least equal to force due to the injection pressure (this
force can be applied mechanically or hydraulically) and must follow properly the
timing of the molding cycle.
The mechanism of a clamping unit consist of two platens, one fixed and the other
movable and a mechanism for translating the latter. This mechanism is a power
press conformed by hydraulic piston or mechanical toggle devices, which applies
forces of several thousand tons.
The calculation of the clamping force in an accurate way is a difficult task since
during the injection process the injection pressure is not perfectly constant and
as the mold heats up, it expands, increasing the clamping force. For this reason
most machines used a safety factor in the calculation of the force. The best for the
clamping force is to use the minimal required but adequate for the mold injection
since as excessive clamping force can modify the mold cavity which produce flaws
in the final piece.
The clamping force, Fclamping , can be calculated as follows:
Fclamping = Pinjection A SF

(24)

where
Pinjection : is the pressure at with the injection process operates. For simplification, the maximum injection pressure is 200 MPa, it is assumed that the
injection pressure will be 100 MPa.
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Aerospace Design I

A: is the area projected over the clamping unit by the cavity mold. It will
correspond to the area projected by the spoon and the area of the link of the
injection channels. Therefore, taking into account that the mold consist of
eight spoons,
A = 8 (Aspoon + Achannel ) = 8 (9.2745 104 + 0.3 104 ) = 7.6596 103 m2
SF: is the safety factor. For this case it will be assumed that the force applied for the clamping unit must be 15% higher than the force applied by
the injection system. This value is usually selected depending on the toggle
devices failure resistance and model, so an estimate value has been chosen for
convenience.
With this the force that the clamping system must done to maintain the previous
requirements must be:
Fclamping = 100 106 7.6596 103 1.15 = 880854 N

(25)

It is also interesting to show the force that each tie bar of the injection mold machine
must do and the pressure required for the clamping unit. The force of made by each
cylinder of the clamping unit will be:
Fcylinder = 220213.5 N
Knowing that each cylinder has a diameter of 130 mm the pressure that each cylinder
must apply and the total pressure done by the clamping unit will be:
Pcylinder =

220213.5
= 16.59 MPa
0.0652

Pclamping = 66.36 MPa

7.2

Force of the Ejection System

The force done by the ejector pins must be calculated and it is, as for the clamping
force, a difficult task since it must be adequate to separate the piece from the platens
of the mold but also it needs to assure that there will not be deformations during
the process and also it must not exceed the mechanical properties of the material in
order to not break the spoon.
The ejection force that must by supply by the ejection system is simplified and
defined in the following formula:
Feject = cos Ff riction

(26)

where
is the angle between the friction force and the ejection force and will depend
on the contact surface of the spoon on each area. The angles assumed in this
part will be explained during the calculations.
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Aerospace Design I

Ff riction is the friction force and it is defined as

Ff riction = s Fnormal

(27)

s is the friction coefficient between the plastic material (ABS cycolac) and
the stainless steel. This value will oscillate between 0.15 and 0.4 but for this
case it is assumed that s = 0.2.
Fnormal is the normal force between the plastic material and the stainless steel
and it is defined as
Fnormal = Aef f
(28)
Aef f is the cross sectional critical area of the item in the mold, in this case the
spoon, that generates the maximum internal stresses on the mold. This area
corresponds to Figure 7 and is equal (for one spoon) to Aeff = 9.918 105
m2 .

Figure 7: Cross section of the critical area

is the stress generated in the critical area of the spoon and it can be expressed
as follows
=E
(29)
E is the Youngs modulus of the ABS cycolac, E = 2280 MPa.
is the strain of the plastic material (material expansion/contraction during
injection process due to temperature changes). Its definition is the following
= CT E (Tsolidif ication Teject )

(30)

CTE is the coefficient of thermal expansion of the material. For this case the
coefficient of thermal expansion of ABS cycolac is CTE = 8.82 105 mm C
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Tsolidif ication is the temperature at which the plastic solidifies. Since this data is
not provided in the properties it must be estimated. Knowing that the no flow
melt temperature is 132 C (this temperature corresponds to the final injection
of plastic after the injection process and it is very closed to the solidification
temperature) it can be estimated that the solidification temperature will be
between 120-125 C.
Teject is the temperature at which the material is finally ejected from the cavity
mold. This data is provided been Teject = 59 C.
Once all the relevant data is defined and show is time to calculate the unknowns in
order to solve the problem. In the following lines it will be shown the process to
find, as expected, the force required to eject the eight spoons of the cavity mold and
the force exerted for each ejector pin that will eject one spoon each.
= 8.82 105 (120 59) = 5.3802 103
= 2280 106 5.3802 103 = 12.27 MPa
Fnormal = 12.27 106 8 9.918 105 = 9733.01 N
Ff riction = 0.2 9733.01 = 1947.10 N

(31)
(32)
(33)
(34)

Finally, the the angle should be implemented in the area and due to the complexity
of the cross sectional area find a mean value or a proper value for this angle is, in fact
very difficult. Moreover, it is remarkable that, although dividing this area by parts
and the estimation of the angle of circular surfaces is very hard. For this reason it
will be done the simplification than = 0. This assumption is based on if
= 0 the force used in the ejection will be the maximum one required for
those areas in which this is the case.
Thus, the ejection force of the total system and the ejection force due to each pin
will be:
Feject = 1947.10 N
Fpin = 243.38 N

(35)
(36)

17