Abstract:
The objectives of this research are to the study and analyze significant factors affecting varied deformation in the ABS plastic injection molding process by using design of experiments and injection molding process simulation with the Moldex3D programming. In this study, eight factors were initially screened namely injection flow rate, injection pressure, switching over position, packing time, packing pressure, melt temperature, mold temperature and cooling time.
As a result of using injection process simulation as of the fractional factorial experiment design (2 [superscript8-4]), the significant factors affecting to deformation were injection flow rate, packing time, melt temperature and cooling time. Then the response surface methodology (RSM) with the central composite design (CCD) the results showed that the maximum of deformation was 3.97 mm appears condition of each parameter to be the injection flow rate of 58%, packing time of 6 sec, melt temperature of 221 degree Celsius and cooling time of 55 sec wear applied to analyze the optimum condition of each parameter before simulating the injection process by Moldex3D programming results showed that the maximum of deformation was 3.93 mm and applied to the actual injection process also resulted the maximum deformation of 4 mm Hence there was no statistical difference between simulation results and experimental results at 95% confidential interval level.
After implementation, the result showed a defective rate of 3.3% which meets the specification limit of 5%. The contribution of this research provided a guideline on solving deformation problem in ABS plastic injection process which is able to implement in the real circumstance of production.