Injection moulding of automotive components: comparison between hot runner systems for a case study

This paper studies the fabrication of a plastic arm of the body interior of a medium-sized car in order to evaluate the beneficial effects of using sequential injection moulding (SIM). The main requirement for the component is optimal surface finishing to maintain an excellent surface appearance. The author has investigated the product fabrication by evaluating different hot runner systems, gating and product configurations. The SIM phases for the production of parts with these complex geometries have been studied in order to assess the product manufacturability and process feasibility through finite element (FE) analyses. FE analyses ere used to study the filling, post-filling and cooling phases of the injection process. Using the FE system, a deeper investigation of thermal stress and strain distributions was performed to predict defect presence in the final product. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.