“Plastic Injection Molding – Robust

Process Development & Scientific

Molding”

Date: 07, 08, 09 August 2022

Organized by: OTC Training Sdn. Bhd.
Facilitated by: Selvaraj Balasundram
Selvaraj B 2022 1
 How prevent nozzle tip leaks? Cold runner

1. Dead spots on a general-purpose nozzle tip with a small orifice.

2. In addition to increased shear, a small nozzle-tip orifice will have a dead spot
for material to stagnate
3. As the injected material rushes past this dead spot, it tries to pull the trapped
or stagnant material out.
4. Unfortunately, it also acts as a venturi and tries to pull air into the melt stream,
which will look like splay on your parts. All of these reasons dictate why it is
critical to properly size the machine nozzle-tip orifice to the sprue-bushing
orifice.
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How prevent nozzle tip leaks? Hot runner
Left: Machine nozzle-tip orifice is smaller than
the inlet orifice, creating an area of stagnant
material at the wall of the inlet orifice.

Right: Machine nozzle-tip orifice is the same

size as the inlet orifice, eliminating any stagnant
material at the wall of the inlet orifice

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How prevent nozzle drooling?

Selvaraj B 2022 4
How prevent material burning in hot runner system?

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 How prevent material burning in hot runner system?
1. Left: Flow bore of sliding nozzle does not align with the flow bore in manifold at
room temperature. This design relies on an assumed amount of thermal
expansion of the manifold to move the flow bores into perfect alignment.
Proper alignment is heavily dependent on operating temperature and
machining tolerance of both the hot runner and the mold.

2. Right: Flow bore of the threaded nozzle aligns perfectly with the flow bore in
the manifold at room temperature. These nozzles are designed to flex as the
manifold grows keeping the bores aligned at any temperature. Proper alignment
is not impacted by temperature or machining tolerances

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 Can PP & PE be blended?
1. Impact strength of polypropylene (PP) increases at low temperatures through
the addition of polyethylene (PE).

2. Unfortunately, PP and PE are highly immiscible resulting in a blend with poor

adhesion among its phases, coarse morphology and consequently poor
mechanical properties.

3. The compatibility between the phases of a blend can be improved by the

addition of compatibilizers, which results in a finer and more stable
morphology, better adhesion between the phases of the blends and
consequently better properties of the final product.

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 PP & PE moisture content
1. See material processing guide from Asahi

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 PP & PE feed throat temperature
1. In general most feed throat temps are from 35 deg C to no more than 55 deg
C.

2. Do not get any part of the feed throat cool enough to cause condensation.

3. Do not let the feed throat get hot enough to let the material soften and clump.

4. The throat temperature should be the same as the dryer temperature.

5. Some the FT water solenoid valve gets stuck, so they just remove it.

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Cycle time reduction

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 Injection phase
1. Present setting 15% 40% 70% 70%
2. The 15% slow speed is filling up the final 15% of the part weight.
We can leave it as it is due to:
i. we want to slow down before the end
ii. It only impacts about 0.2s of inj time.
3. We sped up the profile to become 15% 80% 70% 70%.
4. Injection time reduce from 12.8s to 11.4s.
5. This is a 1.4s reduction.
6. Burn mark starts to appear.
7. Mould was stopped and cleaned for about 10 minutes.
8. Burn mark still did not disappear after that.
9. Even when we set back to original parameter, burn still appears.

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 Injection phase - conclusion
1. We should be able to get 1.5s to 2s injection time reduction from
improved mould venting, especially at the commonly appearing
burn mark areas.

2. More time reduction than this would require looking into the
venting.

3. More venting, fixed cleaning time for vents.

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Cycle time reduction

2s

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 Pack & hold
1. This is an area we did not explore as the present time is low.

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 Charging
1. Original setting was 75% 75% 70%.
2. We increased to 75% 80% 70%.
3. Charging time reduce from 39.43s to 38.24s.
4. This is a 1.4s reduction.
5. No alarm noticed.
6. Weight remained at a good weight of 11.66 to 11.62kg.

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 Charging - conclusion
1. We should be able to get 1.5s charging time reduction.

2. Further reduction in charging time would require the following:

i. carry out study on material drying versus charging time reduction.
ii. Discussion with screw manufacturers for a more efficient screw.
iii. This is something to be looked into as we reduce cooling time as
otherwise, this will become a bottleneck.

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Cycle time reduction

2s

1.5s

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 Cooling time
1. Original setting at 47s.
2. Reduced by 5s to 42s.
3. Crack was observed at cavity side.
4. Reduced mold temp by reducing chiller temp from 19C to 15C.
5. Crack disappeared.
6. Actual mold temp between 50C – 60C.
7. Reduced cooling time by another 2s to 40s. Here is where charging
time becomes a bottleneck.
8. Crack start appearing again. Measurement of mold temp shows mold
temp rising again to 56C.
9. Further reduction in chiller temperature does not seem to reduce the
mold temp.

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 Cooling time - conclusion
1. The heat transfer between chiller and mold needs to be relooked.
2. Chiller says in and out is 20C to 22C. Mold at 50C?
3. Chiller keeps tripping. Why?
4. Why crack at the same place always on the cavity side? This is
obviously a hot spot on the tool. How can we cool this spot/s better?

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Cycle time reduction

2s 7s

1.5s

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 Additional observation
1. Cushion is good at 6.4%. Should be between 5% to 10%.
2. The less, the better.
3. The biggest cycle time reduction would be realized in the cooling
zone followed by the charging zone.
4. Tooling improvements, tooling maintenance, feed throat area and
screw improvements requires to be looked into.

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