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Kx assisted this customer in the development of a new line of injection molding machines.
In order to produce quality plastic parts
consistently and quickly, the injection molding machine used to
produce the parts must meet rigorous standards. The platens in
which the force is transmitted to the molds must be held to tight
deflection tolerances and all of the components must withstand load
cycling over long periods of operation.
Unacceptably high deflection will produce inferior parts.
Structural failure due to cyclic loading
can cause
catastrophic machine failure, injury and, costly shut down.
Working as part of our customer's product development team,
Kx analyzed each of the three platens for all machines and iterated to
optimum designs. In particular, we wanted to reduce the weight
of these castings, especially of the moving platen, to allow for shorter cycle
time and more parts per hour.
As an additional check, the machine bases were also analyzed.
Any compliance in the base can introduce a mis-match in the mold faces. This, in turn, can lead to inferior parts and
unwanted flash at the parting line due to separation of the moving and stationary molds.
In the end, six new prototype machines were designed
and built that met all of the stress and deflection criteria.
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