Design with Concurrent Approach: Development and Flow Analysis of Injection Mould Tool for Computer Monitor Lamp Holder

Abstract

The plastic product manufacturing industry has been growing rapidly in recent years. One of the most popular processes for making plastic parts is injection moluding. The design of injection mould is critically important to product quality and efficient product processing. Mould-making companies, who wish to maintain the competitive edge, desire to shorten both design and manufacturing leading times by applying a systematic mould design process. The mould industry is an important support industry during the product development process, serving as an important link between the product designer and manufacturer. Product development has changed from the traditional serial process of design, followed by manufacture, to a more organized concurrent process where design and manufacture are considered at a very early stage of design. The research presents the basic structure of two plate injection mould design, injection moulding machine selection, process analysis of the injection mould design using mould flow analysis to optimize the mould cost in the design stage. This injection mould design system covers both the mould design process and mould knowledge management. In this work, CAE tools have been used in the design stage to reduce the losses to obtain the shortened lead time, high quality and achieving low cost of the mould. The design of an injection process involves the simultaneous consideration of plastic part design, mould design and injection moulding machine selection, production  scheduling and cost as early as possible in the design stage. The result indicated that conventional method will consume more time and also increases the cost of machining and delay in dispatching the product. If change in design happens before pre-production and after production by trial and error method then there will be a drastic increase in design change cost which effects on cycle time, waste of raw material, increase in process time and wastage of labour cost. These entire draw backs are eliminated by using computer aided design and computer aided engineering  technology for mould design and manufactured in very short period of time with minimum cost. The future scope of work is to include cooling, warpage and fatigue analysis to optimize tool design and tool life.