Investigation of cooling performance of injection molds using pulsed mold temperature control

In injection molding, the mold temperature is one of most important process parameters that affect the flow characteristics and part deformation. The mold temperature usually varies periodically owing to the effects of the hot polymer melt and the cold coolant as the molding cycle repeats. In this study, a pulsed mold temperature control was proposed to improve the part quality as well as the productivity by alternatively circulating hot water and cold water before and after the molding stage, respectively. Transient thermal-fluid coupled analyses were performed to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the proposed pulsed mold heating and cooling system. The simulation results were then compared with those of the conventional mold cooling system in terms of the heating and cooling efficiencies of the proposed pulsed mold temperature control system.