Simulation of injection molding into rapid-prototyped molds

Injection molding is a very mature technology, but the growth of layer-buil d, additive, manufacturing technologies (rapid prototypying) has the potent ial of expanding injection molding into areas not commercially feasible wit h traditional molds and molding techniques. This integration of injection m olding with rapid prototyping has undergone many demonstrations of potentia l. What is missing is the fundamental understanding of how the modification s to the mold material and mold manufacturing process impact both the mold design and the injection molding process. This work expanded on an approach to utilize current numerical simulation programs and created a tool for op timizing the creation and use of non-metal molds for injection molding. Ver ification and validation work is presented. The model was exercised by stud ying the effect of varying the thermal conductivity on final-part distortio ns. This work clearly showed that one could not obtain reasonable results b y simply changing a few input parameters in the current simulations. Althou gh the approach did produce more realistic results, more work will be requi red for a tool capable of accurate, quantitative predictions.