Thermal transfer in laminated injection moulds and comparison of the mould assembly techniques

Eliette Mathey , Luc Penazzi (1) , Fabrice Schmidt (1) , François Ronde Oustau (1)

1 CROMeP - Centre de Recherche Outillages, Matériaux et Procédés

Recent studies have shown the possibilities to apply rapid prototyping methods for tool making. An advantage of these processes is the ability to obtain complex shapes (that would be impossible to obtain using machining). This aspect is particularly interesting to create cooling circuit in injection moulds. In this paper, conception of cooling circuit in laminated moulds is considered. After a description of steady state and transient heat transfer models in an injection mould, the influence of the cooling circuit geometry, the mould making technique (massive machined mould or laminated mould) and the bonding technique for laminated moulds (glued or brazed) is studied. Results show the advantage of a thermal barrier (which could easily be obtained in laminated tools) on mould thermal regulation. Discontinuities of mould material introduced by the lamination lead to a loss of thermal performance of the mould. However, a brazed mould shows performance almost equal to massive moulds.

Mots clés: laminate tooling; polymer injection; mould cooling; numerical simulation

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Eliette Mathey, Luc Penazzi, Fabrice Schmidt, François Ronde Oustau. Thermal transfer in laminated injection moulds and comparison of the mould assembly techniques. ESAFORM 2003 -6th ESAFORM conference on material forming, Apr 2003, Salerno, Italy. p.63-66. ⟨hal-01788433⟩