In injection molding of an optical disk, a toric lens, etc., their performance depends on the transcription preciseness of fine surface structure of a mold. However, transcription behavior has not been made clear yet, because transcription is made in very short time and the structure is very small. In this paper, transcription properties have been examined, by using V-grooves of various sizes. machined on mold surfaces, and the following results are obtained. (1) Transcription properties have been made clear experimentally and it was found that the mold temperature $T_D$ makes great influence on the transcription property and that compression applying time $t_c$ should be taken more than 2.0s for fine transcription. (2) A mechanical model of transcription process, in consideration with strain recovery due to viscoelastic property of polymer. is proposed. (3) Simulation results agree with experimental ones fairly well. It means that the transcription model is useful for estimation of transcription property in advance of an actual. injection molding.

Microlens arrays were fabricated using a novel fabrication technology based on the exposure of a PMMA (Polymethylmethacrylate) sheet to deep X-rays and subsequent thermal treatment. X-ray irradiation causes the decrease of molecular weight of PMMA, which in turn decreases the glass transition temperature and consequently causes a net volume increase during the thermal cycle resulting in a swollen microlens. A new physical modeling and analyses for micro lens formation were presented according to experimental procedure. A simple analysis based on the new model is found to be capable of predicting the shapes of micro lens which depend on the thermal treatment. For the replication of micro lens arrays having various diameters with different foci on the same surface, the hot embossing and the microinjection molding processes has been successfully utilized with a mold insert that is fabricated by Ni-electroplating based on a PMMA microstructure of micro lenses. Fabricated microlenses showed good surface roughness with the order of 1nm.

Polymeric micro lens arrays with diameters of $13\~96\;{\mu}m$ fabricated using the micro-compression molding with electro formed mold inserts. In the present study, the electro forming process was used to make the metallic micro-mold insert for micro-molding of microlens array. The wettability property of the fabricated mold insert was examined by measuring the contact angle of the polymer melt on the mold insert. Microlenses were compression-molded with the fabricated mold insert. The effects of the molding temperature and wettability property on the replication quality of the molded lenses were analyzed experimentally.

Solid-state extrusion technique was employed for the improvement of mechanical properties of polylactic acid (PLLA) widely used as biodegradable internal fixation devices currently. Cylindrical billets were machined out from the vacuum compression-molded PLLA to have various diameters, and solid-state extrusion of the billets was performed at various drawing rates and at the extrusion temperature of $130^{\circ}C$. Throughout the whole processes the decrease in molecular weight was significantly suppressed to be about $10\%$. Flexural modulus and strength of PLLA increased up to 8.3 GPa and 221 MPa, respectively. Studies on the orientation and crystallinity of extruded PLLA could reveal the effects of billet morphology, draw ratio, and drawing rate on the flexural strengths of PLLA.

The wavelike flow mark phenomenon is one of the surface defects that can arise during the injection stage of the injection molding process. We have performed a numerical analysis using a finite element method for the injection molding to verify the validity of 'Go-over' hypothesis. Also, we have compared the results of numerical analysis with available experimental data. Numerical analysis results of the flow marks are qualitatively in good agreement with experimental data of reference, but are quantitatively deviated from experimental data in a consistent manner. A parametric study has been performed to examine the correlative effects of various injection molding processing parameters and material properties on the flow mark size.

Injection molding is widely used in producing various plastic parts due to its high productivity and the demand for high precision injection molded products is ever increasing. To achieve successful product quality and precision, the design of gating and runner systems in the injection mold is very important since it directly influences melt flow into the cavity. Some defects such as weld lines and overpacking can be effectively controlled with proper selection of gate locations. In the present study, the design of gate locations in injection molding of a dashboard for automobiles was carried out with CAMPmold, a PC-based simulation system for injection molding. A dummy runner was developed to simulate a runner system in order to increase the efficiency of the analysis. The numbers and locations of gates were varied in the present investigation as that an acceptable design was obtained in terms of reduced maximum pressure and clamping force.

This study is an attempt to understand the birefringence and stress development in an injection molded disk. A computer code was developed to simulate all three stages of the injection molding process - filling, packing and cooling by finite element method. The constitutive equation used here was compressible Leonov model. The PVT relationship was assumed to follow the Tait equation. The flow-induced birefringence was related to the calculated flow stresses through the linear stress-optical law. The predicted birefringence was in good agreement with the experimental results.

Thermoforming of fiber reinforced thermoplastic (FRTP) braided tubes was studied as a new forming technique. FRTP braided tubes with four plies are fabricated by the pressure bonding method are used in thermoforming. Bulge forming, bending process, pipe fittings and FE analysis are carried out in this study. In bulge forming the composite tube can be expanded up to about two times initial diameter. The suggested bending process can be obtained bent products with various bending radii. In pipe fitting it is possible to fabricate T-shape fitting, cross fitting and two-branch fitting. These results exhibit developed forming processes become useful processes for textile composite tubes.

The backlight unit(BLU) is used as a light source of TFT liquid-crystalline-display (TFT-LCD) module. In this backlight unit, one of important components is the light guide, which is usually made of transparent polymers. Currently the screen-printing method is mainly used for the light guide as a manufacturing process. However, it has limitation to the flexibility of three-dimensional optical design. In the present paper a new alternative manufacturing method for the light guide with low-cost is proposed. This manufacturing method is named as direct surface forming (DSF), which is very similar to the well-known hot embossing except for partial contact between mold and substrate. The results of this new manufacturing method are presented in terms of processing condition, dimensional accuracy, productivity, etc.