Abstract: Injection molding is one of the very widely used manufacturing process for polymer materials due to its high production rate and low process cost. However, polymer parts manufactured through injection molding process are prone to various defects such as geometrical defect, shape related defect and visual defects. All designers work hard to minimize these defects and increase the quality of the molded part to satisfy the end application through the molding process parameters optimization with help of design of experiments (DOE). The main objective of this paper is to study the effect of various injection molding process parameters on the volumetric shrinkage of a acetal polymer gear part, identifying the most significant parameter causing high volumetric shrinkage and optimizing the process parameters through Taguchi orthogonal array design and analysis of variance (ANOVA) method. The acetal polymer gear injection molding process is simulated using Moldflow adviser ultimate simulation software and the change in volumetric shrinkage is analysed for various process parameters combination. Taguchi optimization and ANOVA method were found to be very useful in determining the most significant molding process parameter that affect volumetric shrinkage and optimizing the control parameters for achieving minimum part shrinkage.
Keywords: Injection molding, polymer gears, shrinkage, Taguchi optimization, ANOVA method.
Title: Minimization of Shrinkage in Injection Molding Process of Acetal Polymer Gear Using Taguchi DOE Optimization and ANOVA Method
Author: Ramkumar Ramakrishnan, Dr. Ken Mao
International Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Technology
ISSN 2348-7593 (Online)
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