Design and fabrication of expandable cavity injection mold for open cell microcellular foam
| Autor: | S. J. A. Rizvi, Naresh Bhatnagar |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
0209 industrial biotechnology
Materials science Fabrication Mechanical Engineering technology industry and agriculture Core (manufacturing) 02 engineering and technology Molding (process) medicine.disease_cause Seal (mechanical) Biodegradable polymer Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Computer Science Applications chemistry.chemical_compound 020901 industrial engineering & automation Polylactic acid chemistry Control and Systems Engineering Mold medicine Composite material Reverse osmosis Software |
| Zdroj: | The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. 102:1819-1837 |
| ISSN: | 1433-3015 0268-3768 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00170-018-3203-3 |
| Popis: | Microcellular injection molding (MIM) of thermoplastics is a challenging molding process compared to conventional injection molding (IM) process because of its narrow processing window. As far as microcellular molding of open-celled foam is concerned, it is much more difficult because of extremely narrow processing window for open-cell foam and transient nature of melt temperature and pressure inside cavity during the molding process. However, it is expected that molding of open-celled microcellular foam may open many new areas such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, reverse osmosis, dialysis membranes, and fuel cell. The production cost may also be reduced manifolds. In present work a novel expandable cavity mold (EC mold) was designed and fabricated. EC mold has some nonconventional features like pneumatically actuated gate seal, mechanism for cavity expansion, and arrangement for cyclic heating-cooling of core and cavity blocks. In present study polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable polymer, was used and expandable cavity molding (EC molding) variables, namely, cavity expansion rare (mm/s), cavity expansion distance (mm), and cavity expansion-compression-expansion (ECE) profile mode, were studied. The results confirm molding of PLA foams with very high cell density and impinged structure. The micrographs and open-cell ratio confirm the formation of PLA foam with ~40% open-cell content. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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