The tooling industry has experienced a lot of innovative trends over the past decades, and like other units of production, it has been welcomed with more straightforward, intelligent, and cost-effective techniques.
To meet the higher demand for products in the future market, there are some new technological trends in the injection molding industry, such as intelligent integration, 3D printing, new materials, and robotic automation.
Intelligent sensors to control the molding process
Injection molding is a very delicate process that needs careful control. It will become more intelligent and innovative in different units with sensors, ranging from in-mold parameters to machine parameters, big data, and quality control of produced parts. These intelligent sensors are expected to improve to solve the problems, which are difficult to foresee in the process. Below are some units that have started taking effect already and how.
Temperature controlling
Temperature sensors have a lot of roles to play when it comes to in-mold melt temperature monitoring. This is a tedious task: monitoring the material melt time during the injection molding process since it is attached to the mold, making it very easy to know the phase lags and inaccurate melt temperature measurements. Temperature sensors are of two basic kinds: infrared temperature sensors and surface-mount thermocouples.
Predicting possible product defects
Ultrasonic sensors are used to monitor melt viscosity in injection molds. This is because it has a lot to do with the flow and warpage of the product as it influences molded part quality. Melt viscosity is essential in the injection molding process and definitely needs to be taken seriously. This sensor is used to measure the melt front and velocity to analyze if there could be any possible end-product defects.
Save raw data
The injection molding process needs lots of data to ensure the process is going well, and most of this raw data is resident in the mold cavity, where all the manufacturing processes occur. However, with the help of sensors, this information can be retrieved and stored accurately with the help of significant data storage, where all these manufacturing steps collaborate with cloud computing and internet storage facilities.
Big data for molding technology
Using big data is a new technology emerging in recent years in molding technology. It makes the process more comfortable to track their molds in real-time. This process helps to monitor mold output as well as mold maintenance.
Connecting molds to a main internet connection server, however, makes it possible. Below is a concise insight into how big data is applied in mold technology for mold maintenance and product output.
Mold output monitoring
Big data can be applied in mold output monitoring, and this process is achievable by installing a mold monitor into the injection molding process, which helps record the production cycle of injection molding after every completed cycle as well as compute the average time a cycle takes to complete and is documented on a weekly basis. With this, it is possible to keep track of the different molding processes and compare all the data, which can improve production and shorten the cycle time.
Calling data flexible
A very viable way to apply information from big data is to call the data anytime and anywhere. And the most existing fact is that big data isn't restricted to one plant, as it can be replicated in several production systems. You can use the data from other plants to optimize your molding parameters, which can increase productivity and accuracy. Big data technology gives manufacturers insight into their schedule mold maintenance and those planned for in the future in real-time, which has a way to affect output and other decision-making processes.
Benefits of 3D printing technologies
Using 3D printing for injection tooling has vast interest, as this implies that it affects almost every aspect of mold and molded part manufacturing. Following are some advantages of tooling with 3D printing technologies.
Easy Design of a Custom Tool
This is one leverage 3D printing has over most manufacturing techniques: its flexibility when it comes to creating intricate product designs and the capacity to produce objects in layers. Customers could efficiently respond to adjustments in their design where necessary.
However, 3D printing enhances the design in a way that it promotes light-weighting, which is achieved by the production of minimal lattice structures that reduce the amount of materials applied in the production cycle.
3D printing reduces waste.
The tooling process employed in 3D printing is very economical and helps reduce the chances of wasting production parts and scrap left over. Naturally, every manufacturing process uses the subtractive method to deliver molded parts, and this involves the removal of materials from a loaded object until the desired shape is achieved. But this is not applicable in the 3D printing process; instead, elements are added to create the desired form. And this makes it almost impossible to have waste during this process. And its ability to cycle waste into filaments added to other layers or used in the manufacture of other products makes it most suitable for manufacturing.
Cost-effective for tool manufacturing
3D printing helps reduce the cost of making multiple units of a product in a faster way. And the essential part is the speed of producing these parts. In a short time, the clients can get his products, check their performance, and make modifications until satisfied.
New materials for plastic parts
In the very few years, most high-tech molds will be designed with highly efficient epoxy or carbon fiber, which will enhance the quality and durability of the molded parts through faster development cycles and cooling times.
The production of molded parts has seen development in recent years, and it is definitely expected to witness more innovations with time. Coolants like water have typically enhanced the cooling system of an injection mold.
The application of automation and robotics
The injection tooling and molding processes are an essential part of plastic manufacturing, and it is vital to get them right. The use of robotics and automation had earlier been initiated in the molding and tooling industry because of its speed and accuracy over a long period of time. And for this reason, the rate of its application has witnessed a drastic increase over the years.
However, it would be challenging for conventional injection manufacturers to stay in business, as the use of automation and robotics would have revolutionized the molding industry by the next few years, handling all the required processes from start to finish. Virtually every part of the molding industry has and surely will be affected by this unusual trend soon.
Assist in CNC processing.
CNC machine processing is an automated process that is programmed with restricted information to produce high-quality parts. But the essential fact is that the extent to which these machines can work is restricted; they still need help to perform some functions like loading and unloading, polishing, and other post-molding processes.
The integration of robotic arms into CNC machines will go a long way toward improving the speed and accuracy of the above-listed factors. This is because these robots don't rest, which reduces the production cycle per product. Integration of robotic arms into CNC machines makes the tooling process fully autonomous, with no help from a human operator. This is because these robots are highly programmed devices with no restrictions, and they can perform a wide range of functions at the same time.
Loading and unloading
The integration of robotics into a CNC machine can help with the loading and unloading of materials and molded parts. Conventionally, the tooling and molding processes will be operated by people with no ability to load and unload themselves. However, a robotic arm can help the machine make the loading and unloading process a fully automated process because it is flexible and can easily pick and exchange parts during machining and molding processes. This has a huge impact on the work output, as it makes the work very easy.
Polishing with robotics
Robots, with the help of a gripper, can charge a part to a buffing wheel to ensure an excellent surface finish while ensuring that all the sides are polished. And this process is highly time- and energy-efficient, which makes for high effectiveness in production in the future.
CNC machines are restricted to one single belt grit, and molded parts with complex shapes would need to be reloaded into the CNC machine after each, so integrating a robotic arm into this process can help to enhance the surface finishing process.
Post-Mold Processing
Robots can help CNC machines with different forms of molding processes as well as post-mold processes like quality control analysis and packaging, making every process around production very fast, easy, and efficient, which increases the cell efficiency of CNC machines. This implies that workers would not have to handle most of the production cycles, as the devices can fully and autonomously handle every process.
In short, the molding industry will become more intelligent due to the emergence of new technologies in the next few years, and the development of new products will become more convenient and environmentally friendly.