Study on reducing sink mark depth of a microcellular injection molded part with many reinforcing ribs

As a novel injection molding process, microcellular injection molding process has the characteristics of saving material, decreasing warpage and surface sink mark, improving dimensional accuracy, etc. But for the plastic part with thick reinforcing ribs, if selection of process parameters are not reasonable, foaming quality of melt will be affected and obvious sink mark defects will appear on the surface of plastic part. This paper selected a medical appliance shell with many reinforcing ribs as research object. Simulation experiments of microcellular injection molding process were performed by using orthogonal experiment method. The influence of different process parameters, such as mold cavity surface temperature, melt temperature, injection rate, cooling time, weight reduction ratio and supercritical fluid level, on the surface sink mark of microcellular injection molding part was studied by using signal-to-noise ratio analysis and analysis of variance . The results showed that mold cavity surface temperature was the most important influence factor on surface sink mark depth of microcellular injection molding part, followed by weight reduction ratio, cooling time, supercritical fluid level, injection rate and melt temperature. Meanwhile, the optimal combination of process parameters was obtained for minimizing sink mark depth of microcellular injection molding part. The average surface sink mark depth of microcellular injection molding part molded by using the optimized process parameters was only 2.62 mu m, compared to 4.87 mu m of average surface sink mark depth of microcellular injection molding part molded by using the process parameters before optimization, the average sink mark depth of microcellular injection molding part was reduced by 46.2%. Finally, the forming mechanism of sink mark of microcellular injection molding part at locations of reinforcing ribs was discussed, and the influence mechanism of different process parameters on surface sink mark defects of microcellular injection molding part was also analyzed.