Simulation and analysis of injection moulding and rapid prototyping

Abstract

Injection Moulding is the one of the most common methods in producing plastic products for many purposes ranging from a daily product to high-tech equipments. This thesis studies the possibility of incorporating the Injection Moulding simulation software into the mould design process in order to analyze the product, foresee the possible defects, and optimize the design to achieve the maximum outcome of the products with minimum cycle time in each production cycle.

The Autodesk MoldFlow Plastic Insight will be ap-plied as the analysis tool for the particular chosen product ‘Trolley Opener’. In the analysis, it will define the behaviour of plastic material starting from the filling phase until the end of the cooling phase in the injection process. The final result shows that by doing the analyses with the simulation software, it opens the possibility of having four cavity designs of ‘Trolley Opener’ in one mould plate of the size 156 x 156 mm. The author concludes that by having the option of four cavity designs, it increases the optimization of the mould design process, and increases the efficiency of time and material saving during the production process.