• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.171-177
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• 2013

Vacuum-assisted thermoforming is one of the critical steps for successful application of film insert molding (FIM) to make parts of complex shape. If the thickness distribution of the formed film is non-uniform, then cracking, deformation, warpage, and wrinkling can easily occur at the injection molding stage. In this study, the simulation of thermoforming was performed to predict the film thickness distribution, and the results were compared with experiments. Uniaxial tensile tests with a constant crosshead speed for various high temperatures were conducted to investigate the stress-strain behavior. An instance of yielding occurred at the film temperature of $90^{\circ}C$, and the film stiffness increased with increasing crosshead speed. Two types of viscoelastic models, G'Sell model, K-BKZ model, were used to describe the measured stress-strain relationship. The predicted film thickness distributions were in good agreement with the experimental results.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.29-32
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• 2008

A back light unit (BLU) is a key module of a thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD), frequently utilized in various mobile displays. In this study, we experimentally characterize transcription and optical properties of concave and convex microlens arrays (MLAs) of light guide plate (LGP) fabricated by injection molding with polycarbonate as a LGP substrate material. Nickel mold inserts were manufactured by electroforming on the MLA which was fabricated by the thermal reflow of photoresist microstructures patterned by UV-photolithography. For the case of convex microlens, the height of replicated microlens was less than that of the mold insert while maintaining almost the same microlens diameter of the mold insert as the location of the microlens is far from the gate. In contrast, for the concave microlens, the diameter of replicated microlens was larger than that of mold insert, while showing almost the same microlens height as the mold insert. From the optical examination of replicated convex and concave MLAs, it was found that a higher luminance of the LGP was achieved by the concave MLAs compared to the convex MLAs (about 30% enhancement in this case)due to the utilization of a larger amount of light provided by the light sources.