• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.7
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• pp.687-692
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• 2015

A mold design for in-mold coating was developed to achieve simultaneous coating and injection molding of an automotive armrest. The developed mold includes one core and two cavities which are composed of a substrate cavity and a coating cavity. The core was attached to a movable plate and two cavities were mounted on a plate sliding in a stationary plate. In a two-step process, the part was first injection molded and subsequently, with the aid of a sliding table, was transferred to a second cavity. The materials used were PC/ABS for substrate and two-component polyurethane for coating. The experiments were conducted by changing the flow rate to investigate mixing characteristics. As the flow rate increased, the mixing improved. Additionally, the bubbles appeared over the substrate surface decreased with an increase of the weight of injected coating material.