OPTIMIZATION OF WORKING PARAMETERS TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF PLASTICS IN AN INJECTION MOLDING PROCESS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Mechanical, Mechatronics and Manufacturing Engineering (KSK Campus), University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan.

Abstract

Improvement is required in any industry to increase the productivity by reducing the defects rate and remove the overall waste produced during manufacturing process. In this research paper, the working parameters are optimised that are responsible for process variation. A plastics manufacturing company, the major problems were flow marks and air bubbles appeared on the surface of mould part a car side mirror plastic cover. Because of these problems, the overall production of company was decreasing that resulted in customer dissatisfaction and company could not achieve its daily production target. The responsible working parameters for process variation are found to be injection pressure, melting temperature along with viscosity and flow rate of molten material during injection moulding process. The injection speed and screw speed are also considered. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was conducted to find most critical working parameters. It is identified that response surface methodology (RSM) can be used to optimise the working parameters to improve the quality of moulded part that will increase process efficiency by 50%. The data was collected from four machines to find which machine is causing more problems that is found to be Tederic 450 tone machine. This machine has more problems as compared to other machines. Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) material is used for the production of car side mirror plastic cover. The Rejection of this moulded part was counted 35% of total rejection. After optimization, the rejection is reduced to 16% is recorded which is significant improvement.

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