Product Design, Moldflow Analysis, FEA, Plastics, Embedded Technologies, IoTs
Mold and Part Cooling Analysis
Mold cooling time is the biggest contributor to the overall cycle time in almost all plastic molding applications (could be as high 70-80% of total cycle time). Although this is a known fact, many molders and toolmakers continue to take traditional path of regular cooling principles and past experience to design cooling lines. This does not assure the optimal cooling layout and cooling time. Mold cooling analysis will help you optimize cooling layout, reduce cooling time, avoid hot spots, avoid filling/processing issues and most importantly offer you to save money that add to your bottom line.
However, many molders fail to claim additional savings that can be achieved through optimization of whole cooling process and save thousands of dollars. In several cases of existing tools that experienced several processing problems, we have not only resolved those problems, but also have been able to link many problems to uneven cooling and poor cooling abilities of mold. In some cases, customers were unable to even add another line or improve any cooling concerns because of the cost or existing tool design restrictions and or inability to change product design at later stage. These situations leave you with very little room to make any changes and you pay the additional cost of processing issues through the life of product that is molded.
Our daily experience with several plastics parts with cooling and warpage issues tells us that a cooling analysis can be as important as performing filling analysis and may be more important for overall cycle time savings. Many times you can not predict accurate cooling times neither can you assume ideal cooling of the mold. Due to constant demands of combining several parts in to one part along with the most complex product designs with varying thickness and details, one of the most likely mistakes in tool build process could be to think that you have enough cooling.
In many cases even a reduction of one or two seconds in the cooling time can pay for mold cooling analysis many times and can improve the tool life. Provide us with your detailed mold design and cooling layout or let us re-design the cooling lines to improve your overall cooling time and see how you can always save using all advanced CAE services. If you need to see the benefits of using different mold materials or special insert materials for cooling effects in any particular area, let us evaluate your options with scientific answers.
Balanced cooling can be the backbone of product function, assemblies, quality for many multi cavity tools. How sure are you with your existing layouts to provide a perfectly balanced cooling for all cavities ? Do you have a turbulant flow or flow requirements with your current cooling layout? Do you have right size cooling lines, bubblers or baffles ? Do you know the hot spots in your tool ? Do you know that differential cooling can lead to higher cooling time, dimensional variations, warpage issues, aesthetic issues, short shots, uneven part weights, weaker weld lines, mold failure, and part failure ?