Design and thermal analysis of plastic injection mould

This paper presents the design of a plastic injection mould for producing warpage testing specimen and performing thermal analysis for the mould to access on the effect of thermal residual stress in the mould. The technique, theory, methods as well as consideration needed in designing of plastic injection mould are presented. Design of mould was carried out using commercial computer aided design software Unigraphics, Version 13.0. The model for thermal residual stress analysis due to uneven cooling of the specimen was developed and solved using a commercial finite element analysis software called LUSAS Analyst, Version 13.5. The software provides contour plot of temperature distribution for the model and also temperature variation through the plastic injection molding cycle by plotting time response curves. The results show that shrinkage is likely to occur in the region near the cooling channels as compared to other regions. This uneven cooling effect at different regions of mould contributed to warpage. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.