Digital Technologies for the Plastic Industry

Digitalization is a great buzz-word, but if we copy our manual behavior into an automated process, we will miss the opportunity of improving the process. Digitalization requires process know-how and valid data to succeed. The transition from human error to automated error should be avoided by knowledge and analysis. The knowledge of your process, your data, and you customer’s expectations.

One of my questions is – do you know the difference between correlations and causalities? I will try to give you at least part of the answer.

To meet the increasing demand for high quality production in the Injection Moulding process it is important to keep a stable process, despite the changes in viscosity coming from changes in melt index, tool temperature and other external parameters. These parameters can be compensated by adjusting manually the tip temperatures of the hotrunner, but this is a time-consuming task.
Kistler has now developed and fine-tuned Multiflow, an automatic hotrunner fill-balancing technology based on the cavity pressure sensors. The system can run with most hotrunner controllers and we have optimized the ease of installation and use together with the German hotrunner controller manufacturer Fiege.

In this presentation, I will explain why digitalization is playing an ever-growing part in a modern injection molding production plant. Starting from the communication between machines and peripherals, continuing to digital systems like MES and Energy Measurement, we will find out why those tools are needed to enable the operation of a DC Grid. Discovering why this will be the next step in being energy efficient.

Within Novo Nordisk the organization Device Delivery Solution develops the future injection devices. The modelling & Simulation department ensures the robustness of devices within different key performance indicator (KPI) disciplines like GPS, Tolerances, Kinematics, Structural and Design for Manufacturing (DFM). The different KPI’s has often been challenged on resources when several projects need a moulded prototype build, as this typically involves 5-15 components per project that needs KPI assessment in a short time. In the DFM KPI it is no different, often moulding simulation tasks are piling up, leading to extended lead times or, in some cases, a lack of DFM assessment prior to moulding.

To democratize moulding simulations the Gate & Go tool was developed. Gate & Go is a fully automated process, that allows mechanical engineers or designers to perform their own simulations and have mouldability evaluations within a few hours. To launch a Gate & Go simulation only the inlet position and the material needs to be specified.

With polymer selective laser sintering (SLS) is possible to produce highly customized plastic components. However, the long cooling time of the powder matrix limits the maximum system productivity.
In this talk a method to reduce the cooling time of SLS without compromising on quality will be presented. The method is based on the integration of in-printed cooling channels within the powder matrix. A cooling solution is realized using printed channels, and corresponding thermal simulations are developed to predict cooling rates for different channel configurations. Experimental and simulation results show that a 45% cooling time reduction can be achieved while maintaining the same geometrical quality characteristics in terms of dimensions and form error of parts obtained with long cooling times.

Additive manufacturing of soft-tools for injection molding is becoming a standard process to increase the speed of prototyping and reduce costs of tools manufacturing. While standards have been developed over the decades, the process has shown some limitations in precision, resolution, and surface quality, which limits its use in the micro-manufacturing world.

Integrating high-speed 2PP micro-3D printing and unique micro-injection molding expertise, NanoVoxel is the first company worldwide to offer micro-molded parts with the fastest delivery time down to two weeks. This new process offers precisions down to single digit micrometers, freedom of design with radii potentially below 1 µm, surface roughness down to 10 nm and production quantities ranging from prototypes to mass production.

Injection molding is universally recognized as the most versatile and productive platform for high-volume production. However, high tooling costs and long tooling lead-times prevent injection molding from gaining adoption in prototyping, which is a challenge for product developers needing production-grade parts for product verification. 3D printed injection mold tooling is emerging as an attractive complement to conventional metal tooling, and provides the product developer with the opportunity to source rapid tooling to support product verification and low-volume manufacturing.

In this presentation, you will learn how Freeform Injection Molding, a second-generation 3D printed tooling platform, has helped companies accelerate development while substantially reducing costs and risks.