Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEF 2023
12th Brazilian Congress on Manufacturing Engineering
ESTIMATIVA DA VIDA ÚTIL EM MOLDES EM ALUMÍNIO POR MEIO DE REGRESSÕES NÃO-LINEARES
Submission Author:
Evandro Menezes de Souza Amarante , BA
Co-Authors:
Evandro Menezes de Souza Amarante, Victor Gabriel Sousa Fagundes dos Santos, Pedro Guilherme Carvalho de Souza Marconi, Armando Sá Ribeiro Júnior, Valter Estevão Beal, Cristiano Vasconcellos Ferreira
Presenter: Pedro Guilherme Carvalho de Souza Marconi
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEF2023.COF23-0145
Abstract
The injection moulding process allows the production of dozens of thousands of complexes, injected plastic parts, and provides great productivity and high quality of the final product. Traditionally, injection moulds are made of steel due to its good thermal stability, high mechanical strength and the possibility to easily obtain the desired surface finish that this material allows. Despite these advantages, steel has a low thermal conductivity when compared to other metals, such as aluminum, resulting in more time required for the part to cool down before demolding and consequently, longer injection moulding cycles. On the other hand, the use of aluminum on the fabrication of injection tools is still limited due to its low mechanical strength (in comparison to steel’s), leading to a mistrust as to the number of parts that can be injected, therefore, to its lifespan. Moreover, the lack of data regarding the frequency of maintenance that must be carried out on the aluminum mold to assure the quality of the injected parts corroborate this scenario of uncertainty, since this information is essential to assess the viability of these molds in the manufacture of large lots of injected plastic parts. In this perspective, this article proposes mathematical models, based on exponential regressions, to predict both the maximum number of cycles supported before preventive maintenance is required, and the lifetime of aluminum injection moulds. To achieve this, these models took as reference the number of cycles related to preventive maintenance, as well as the mechanical strength and hardness of several injection mould materials. Once validated, the models (which predictions depend only on mechanical properties and not on the type of material) were also applied to aluminum moulds in order to evaluate its maintenance frequency and lifespan, and to create strategies to improve performance.
Keywords
Injection moulding process, Aluminum injection mould, mould lifespan, exponential regressions
