Development of New GAIM Process for Faster Cooling and Material Reduction

빠른 냉각과 재료절감을 위한 새로운 가스성형 프로세스 개발

Gas-Assisted Injection Molding(GAIM) process, that can be used to provide a hollow shape in a molding, is a variant of the conventional injection molding process. GAIM has many advantages such as reduction of material, sink mark. warpage. and lower injection pressure. Thus, GAIM has been widely applied in the industry to make moldings with a hollow channel such as handles, TV frames and so on. On the other hand, GAIM has some disadvantages such as slow cooling time and flow marks. In the disadvantages, hot gas core causes slow cooling of a molding and the overflow. which is to prevent flow mark. is waste of materials. To solve these problems, we developed a new GAIM system that we called RGIM(Reverse Gas Injection Molding). The RGIM has two special units; one is the overflow buffer, which is used for reduction of a material, and the other tile air unit, which is used for faster cooling of a molding. We conducted an experiment and simulation to verify the efficiency of the RGIM system. Through experiments and simulation, we confirmed the effectively operating of the RGIM system and extracted the optimum process conditions.