A multidisciplinary framework to support the design of injection mold tools

Abstract

The design of injection mold tools is a complex process for which market pressures demand ever-shorter development time and higher quality level. Thus, it is considered imperative to adopt new methods and tools to support the design process, in order to achieve a more effective mold design solution. Based on this assumption, a multidisciplinary framework was developed, centered on Design for Six Sigma methodology and reinforced with a set of highly valued techniques, namely: the European Customer Satisfaction, the Axiomatic Design and the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization. As a result, a platform was built to support the design of any mold tool without undercuts, which tackles the design of an injection mold as a fully integrated multidisciplinary optimization problem, oriented by customer preferences and their impositions. A set of specific analysis sub-modules is integrated through an overseeing optimization code system, responsible for the numerical simulation of the injection process. This platform was validated through the comparison with an existing mold, whose results attained highlight the great potential of the proposed framework to achieve mold design improvement. In particular, the value of mold solutions generated led to a global improvement on mold performance by 5 %.