• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.491-495
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• 2004

The industries use polymer materials for many purposes for they have many merits. The costs of these materials take up too great a proportion of the overall cost of products that use these materials as their major material. It is advantage for polymer industries to reduce these costs. The microcellular foaming process was developed in the early 1980s to solve this problem and proved to be quite successful. Microcellular foaming process uses inert gases such as $CO_2$, $N_2$. As these gases solve into polymer matrices, many properties are changed. The microcellular foaming process makes the glass transition temperature of polymers to low, and diminish the residual stress of polymer matrices. Besides, the microcellular foaming process has several merits, impact strength elevation, thermal insulation, noise insulation, and raw material saving etc. This characteristic of microcellular foaming process has influenced by cell morphology. The cell morphology means cell size and cell density. The cell morphology has influenced by many factors. The examples of factor are pressure drop rate, foaming temperature, foaming time, saturation pressure, saturation time etc. Among their factors, pressure drop rate is the most important factor for cell morphology in microcellular foaming injection molding process. This paper describes about the cell morphology change in accordance with the pressure drop rate of microcellular foaming injection molding process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.341-345
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• 2001

New technoloty called microcellular foaming process was developed at MIT in 1980's. Although it has many good things, it could not be used it all sides of manufacturing plastics. Because it takes a long time for making foamed goods. So microcellular foaming injection molding process appeared to solve this problem. The first purpose of this research is to measure the impact strength as foaming magnitude of microcellular foamed plastics. There are two methods such as batch process and microcellular foaming injection molding process in making foamed plastics. According to the experimental data, the impact strength of each specimen was measured to find out the influence of foaming magnitude of microcellular foamed plastics.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06c
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• pp.621-626
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• 2001

Microcellular foaming process was developed at MIT in 1980's to save a quantity of raw materials and improve mechanical properties. There are many process variables in appling microcellular foaming process to the conventional injection molding process. Of all process variables, part dimension control and shrinkage are the most influential on the post molded dimension. The post molding dimensional change of thermoplastic resins is important to tool designers for predicting the specific difference of molded part vs. actual mold cavity. Generally, articles injection molded are smaller in size than the cavity; hence, the term shrinkage factor is used to define the allowance a designer specifies. It is important to consider the factors that influence molded part dimension. According to ASTM Designation: D 955, shrinkage from mold dimensions of molded plastics was measured. In injection molding, the difference between the dimensions of the mold and of the molded article produced therein from a given material may vary according to the design and operation of the mold. In this paper, shrinkage data of molded plastic parts was obtained. It can be an important information for designing optimum mold system in a microcellular foaming injection molding process.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.853-858
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• 2001

Generally, mixed materials of LDPE, EVA and foaming agent are manufactured by crosslinking foaming or chemical foaming process. Above materials were used in a microcellular foaming injection molding process. Influence of each factor such as injection type, temperature of barrel, rate of mixed materials and contents of foaming agent was estimated by DOE(Design of Experiments). As a result of experiments, injection type and rate of LDPE, EVA have an influence on foaming rate. This data can be used in field of application of LDPE and EVA.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06c
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• pp.414-419
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• 2001

Microcellular foamed plastic is a foaming technology that is safer to the environment and has no significant deterioration of mechanical properties compared to the conventional foamed plastic. Currently, the development of the injection-molding machine for microcellular plastic (MCP) is nearing completion. Currently, researches on the mass production system for the MCP injection-molding machine are under progress. The purpose of this paper is to design the gas supply system suitable for microcellular foaming in the injection-molding machine. For the design process, Axiomatic Approach, a powerful tool for design, will be used.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1630-1635
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• 2005

The microstructure of the parts made by the microcellular injection molding process influence properties, including impact strength, tensile strength and density of material. Microstructure of microcellular plastics is divided into core foaming region and solid skin region. Core foaming region is influenced by pressure drop rate, viscosity and cell coalescence. However, actual mechanism of the skin layers is not known despite its importance. The study on the skin layer is getting important because foaming rate of the plastics is determined by the thickness ratio of the skin layer. Especially in case of large molded part, control of the skin layer is needed because skin layer thickness is changed largely. Therefore it is necessary to study variation in skin layer thickness with processing parameters. In this paper, the influence of temperatures in the mold cavity on the skin layer s thickness was also addressed. In addition, the relationship between the temperature distributions across cavity of the mold with impact strength on parts made with the microcellular injection molding process was addressed. In addition, the method to predict the variation in skin layer thickness with mold temperature is discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.186-191
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• 2000

We use so many plastic products in everyday. Because polymer materials have a lot of merits including low cost and easiness of forming, they are widely using at many manufacturing industries. Microcellular foaming process appeared at MIT in 1980's to save a quantity of material and increase mechanical properties. The information about the thickness of cavity plays an important role in appling microcellular foaming process to the conventional injection molding process. It is essential to make an effective foam. The goal of this research is to measure the relation between the change of cavity's thickness and foaming magnitude made after inserting a gas. R/t is a conception that indicate proportion between radius and thickness of cavity in mold system. By means of SEM observation of side surface of cavity sample, foaming magnitude of cavity is mold system. By means of SEM observation of side surface of cavity sample, foaming magnitude of polymer in microcellular foaming process is decreasing gradually as the value of R/t is increasing. The proposed foaming magnitude changes data of polymer in relation to mold system can be applied in more extensive injection molding process, such as optimum design of mold for microcellular foaming process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.585-590
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• 1997

Conventional foaming process has defects such as lower mechanical properties than ur~foaming material due to non-uniform cell distribution and environmental pollution problem caused by chemical blowing agency. So, a new foaming process such as Microcelluar plastics has been introduced to use inactive gases as a foaming agency. In order to apply Microcellular plastics for mass production process system such as extrusion, injection molding and blow molding, it needs to predict the change in material properties of polymer according to the amount of meltingas. In Polymer molding applying Microcelluar plastics, the change of viscosity among several material properties is the most important factor. Therefore, this paper is aimed to establish the method which not only finds out but also predicts the change of viscosity of ABS(Acrylonitri1e Butadiene Styrene) resin according to inert gas amount in extrusion molding.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2017

In this study, we applied microcellular foaming injection molding process to improve the performance of system air-conditioner drain fan which had been produced by injection molding process and studied the optimization of process conditions through 6-sigma process and response surface method (RSM) to reduce weight and deformation of products. Additive type, melt temperature, mold temperature, and injection screw shape were selected as the factor affecting the weight and deformation of the products by carrying out analysis of trivial many through ANOVA and design of experiment (DOE) method. Among the effect factor, we set the addictive type to Long G/F and screw shape to foaming screw which had the highest level of weight reduction and deformation reduction. The amount of foaming agent gas was set at 60 ml, which was the limit beyond which the weight of product did not decrease any more. For melt temperature and mold temperature, we studied the conditions where both weight and deformation were minimized using the RSM. As a result, we set the melt temperature to $250^{\circ}C$, fixed mold temperature to $20^{\circ}C$, and moving mold temperature to $40^{\circ}C$. The improvement effect was analyzed by appling the selected optimal conditions to the production process using the microcellular foaming injection molding. The results showed that the mean weight of product was measured to be 1,420g which was 19% lower than that measured in the current process. The standard deviations of the weights were found to be similar to those in the current process and it showed a low dispersion. The mean deformation was measured to be 0.9237mm, which represented a 57% reduction compared to the mean deformation in the current process, and the standard deviation decreased from 0.3298mm to 0.1398mm. Moreover, we analyzed the process capability for deformation, and the results showed that the short-term process capability increased from 2.73 to 6.60 which was even higher than targeted level of 6.0.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.637-644
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• 2001

Polymer materials have a lot of merits including the low cost and the easiness of forming. For these reasons they are widely using at many manufacturing industries. Microcellular foaming process appeared at MIT in 1980s to save a quantity of material and increase mechanical properties. There are many process variables in appling microcellular foaming process to the conventional injection molding process. They can be solved by using Axiomatic Design Method which is very useful design method for designing a new product. Its main character is scientific and analytical. The information about the thickness of cavity plays an important role in making an effective foam. The goal of this research is to design mold system for advance of foaming magnitude with axiomatic design method. There is a relation between the change of cavitys thickness and foaming magnitude made after inserting a gas. R/t is a conception that indicate proportion between radius and thickness of cavity in mold system. By means of SEM observation of side surface of cavity sample, foaming magnitude of polymer in microcellular foaming process is decreasing gradually as the value of R/t is increasing. In this paper, an advanced mold system was presented by mapping the relation between functional requirements and design parameters.