Variotherm injection molding

Many mold designers and manufacturers faced with polymer injection molding problems, such as weld lines, flow marks, sink marks, exposed fibers and poor surface transcription of parts. Increasing mold temperature is the conventional way to solve these molding problems. However, with the increase in the mold temperature, the cycle time will also increase significantly.

Therefore, the Rapid Heat Cycle Molding process is introduced to improve the part quality within a reasonable cycle time. The variotherm process is to raise the mold temperature during filling phase, and rapidly cool the mold at the end of filling. Thus, the weld lines of molded parts could form at high temperature, and the fact that the cooling process starts at a lower temperature could shorten the required cycle time. Due to its excellent balance in product performance and production cost, variotherm has gained a lot of attentions in plastic injection molding industry recently.

• To optimize the heat and cool switching timing.
• To determine how much power is required to heat up the mold and how much flow rate of coolant is needed to cool down the mold in varioterm process.
• To maximum the endurance of the mold under such large temperature variation range.

To satisfy the needs of CAE analysis for variotherm molding process, Moldex3D provides comprehensive tools to simulate various rapid heating and cooling molding conditions, integrating fully transient true 3D numerical approach by considering the interplay between filling, packing and cooling stages.

• Determines parameters, such as cooling system, heating system, mold temperature, cooling time, etc. 
• Visualizes the temperature distribution and variation over time on mold surfaces and any cross-section.
• Solves part filling and packing issues with rapid temperature variations.
• Simulates coolant network efficiency and identify potential problems.
• Improves weld lines, flow marks, shrinkage, flatness, etc.

Var­io­ther­mal in­jec­tion mold­ing or var­io­ther­mal mold tem­per­a­ture con­trol is the con­trolled, tar­get­ed and process-in­te­grat­ed heat­ing and cool­ing of the sur­face of the in­jec­tion mold. Var­io­ther­mal mold tem­per­a­ture con­trol leads to sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in com­po­nent qual­i­ty through the dy­nam­ic and area-spe­cif­ic sup­ply and re­moval of heat. For ex­am­ple, var­io­ther­mal in­jec­tion mold­ing al­lows sur­face de­fects (vis­i­ble weld lines, dull ha­los, col­or de­fects) to be avoid­ed and thin wall thick­ness­es to be achieved. An in­no­v­a­tive fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of var­io­ther­mal mold tem­per­a­ture con­trol is the high­ly flex­i­ble and very fast DH-sys­tem for par­tial-cy­cle tem­per­a­ture con­trol of in­jec­tion molds.

To satisfy the needs of CAE analysis for variotherm molding process, Moldex3D provides comprehensive tools to simulate various rapid heating and cooling molding conditions, integrating fully transient true 3D numerical approach by considering the interplay between filling, packing and cooling stages.

The following tips are essential for performing the variotherm analysis in Moldex3D.