• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.100-104
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• 2005

The injection molding is very effective process for various plastic products due to its high productivity. It is also good fur precise products like optical parts. Various thermoplastic materials are also available with this injection molding process. In recent, however, as the overall size of the product increases and micro or nano scale of patterns are applied to the products, we now have some problems such as low fidelity of the replication of the pattern, high molding pressure, or warpage from the in-mold stress. Injection/compression molding is studied to overcome those problems in molding large thin plate with micro pattern array on its surface. An injection compression mold is designed to 3 pieces mold for side gate. We install 4 pressure transducers and 9 thermocouples to measure the melt pressure and surface temperature in the cavity during the process. As a result, the maximum molding pressure for injection compression molding is reduced to 1/3 compared to injection molding and the uniformity of the pressure in the cavity is enhanced by about 15%.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.1124-1128
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• 2008

Thin-wall injection molding is associated with many advantages, including increased portability, the conserving of materials, and the reduction of the molding cycle times. In the application of the thin-wall molding, a considerable reduction of the effective flow thickness results in filling difficulty. High-frequency induction is an efficient way to overcome this filling difficulty by means of heating the mold surface by electromagnetic induction. The present study applies the induction heating to the injection molding of thinwalled micro structures with high aspect ratio. The feasibility of the proposed heating method is investigated through a numerical analysis. The estimated filling characteristics of the micro-features are investigated with variations of mold temperature and part thickness, of which results are also compared with experimental measurements.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.743-746
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• 2000

Plastic microlenses play an important role in reducing the size, weight, and the cost of the systems in the fields of optical data storage and optical communication. In the present study, plastic microlens arrays were fabricated using micro-compression molding process. The design and fabrication procedures for mold insert were simplified by using silicon instead of metal. A simple but effective micro compression molding process, which uses polymer powder, were developed for microlens fabrication. The governing process parameters were temperature and pressure histories and the micromolding process was controlled such that the various defects developing during molding process were minimized. The radius and magnification ratio of the fabricated microlens were $125{\mu}m$ and over 3.0, respectively.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.1242-1245
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• 2001

Plastic microlenses play an important role in reducing the size, weight, and the cost of the systems in the fields of optical data storage and optical communication. In the present study, plastic microlens arrays were fabricated using micro-compression molding process. The design and fabrication procedures for mold insert were simplified by using silicon instead of metal. A simple but effective micro compression molding process, which uses polymer powder, were developed for microlens fabrication. The governing process parameters were temperature and pressure histories and the micromolding process was controlled such that the various defects developing during molding process were minimized. The radius and magnification ratio of the fabricated microlens were 125$\mu\textrm{m}$ and over 3.0, respectively.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.2 s.83
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• pp.158-163
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• 2006

The demand for the miniaturization and high-precision of machine part has recently increased in new technology like biotechnology(BT) and nanotechnology(NT). The purpose of this study is to analyze the molding characteristics according to injection conditions by measuring the filling height in micro injection molding of the polypropylene(PP) and cyclic olefin copolymer(COC). The result shows that the filling effect of COC is better than that of PP in micro rib structure with injection molding process.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.2 no.5
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• pp.11-15
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• 2008

A micro-injection mold for ultra-thin-walled plate was considered in this work. The proposed mold system is for the fabrication of ultra-thin walled plastic plate with micro features by injection molding. As the injection molding of thin-walled plastic, which has the thickness under $400{\mu}m$, itself is not easy, the injection molding of the micro-features in the thin-walled structure is more complicated and difficult. To investigate the basic phenomenon of the ultra-thin walled part during the injection molding process, design of the part and mold system were performed in the present study. The injection molding and structural analysis of the suggested part and mold system were also performed. Consequently, injection molding system for ultra-thin walled plate with micro features were manufactured and presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.60-63
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• 2009

Manufacturing technologies of micro spur gear and micro mold by micro PIM were studied with stainless steel feedstock. For molding of gears, micro mold with gear cavity of 1.2 mm in diameter was produced by wire EDM. The proper injection pressure was selected to 70bar by observation and measuring of shapes and shrinkage of gears before/after sintering. For fabrication of micro mold, a tiny polymer gear was produced by injection into the mold. Then, 316L feedstock was again injected/compressed on the polymer gear and debinded together with polymer gear followed by sintering. As a result, another metal mold with gear cavity reduced to about 20% was fabricated and through repetition of this process chain, micro gear mold with cavity about below 800 um was finally obtained. In reduction of size by injection/compression molding, height of gear tooth was shrunk more and the effort for decrease of roughness of micro cavity were carried out ultrasonic polishing and as a result, the roughness in cavity decreased from 3-4 um to about 200 nm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.1 s.190
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• pp.47-56
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• 2007

Recently, demands on mechanical micro machining technology have been increased in manufacturing of micro-scale precision shapes and parts. The main purpose of this research is to verify the accuracy and cost efficiency of the mechanical micro machining. In order to measure the precision and feasibility of mechanical micro machining, various micro features were machined. Aluminum molds were machined by a 3-axis micro stage in order to fabricate microchips with $200{\mu}m$ wide channel for capillary electrophoresis, then the same geometry of microchip was made by injection molding. To evaluate the cost efficiency of various micro manufacturing processes, cost estimation for mechanical micro machining was conducted, and actual costs of microchips fabricated by mechanical micro machining, injection molding, and MEMS (Micro electro mechanical system) were compared.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.76-79
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• 2003

Glass molding is an advantageous method to manufacture glass micro optical components. However, it is difficult to make tungsten carbide core for glass molded micro optics way. We have developed novel method to fabricate tungsten carbide core for glass molding of glass micro optical components. Silicon masters were fabricated by micro machining. Tungsten Carbide cores were fabricated by forming, sintering and coating. Finally we fabricated glass molded V-groove with pitch of 192$\mu\textrm{m}$ and glass microlens way with lens diameter of 36∼225$\mu\textrm{m}$ by the present method.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.291-298
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• 2014

This study uses two numerical approaches to analyze the filling behavior of micro patterns on micro-injection molding for V-grooves pattern which cannot be simulated with conventional CAE packages. The parametric studies have been performed to examine the fidelity of micro patterns with respect to temperature, pressure, inlet velocity and pattern location on the mold according to the boundary condition from the macro pressure and velocity data which can be obtained by conventional CAE packages. Through these numerical approaches, the filling behavior of polymer melt in micro patterns can be understood, the quality of replication can be predicted, and the V-groove pattern can be shaped uniformly during the process of injection molding.