The effects of mould design towards the quality of integral hinges test samples in injection moulding simulation

This project was conducted to analyze the effects of mould design towards the quality of thermoplastics integral hinges test samples, via simulation. It starts by preparing the Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawing for three types of mould designs. These drawings were then exported to Cadmould 3D-F, as the selected Computer Aided Equipment (CAE) simulation software. This software was used to identify the injection moulding defects and to define the best parameter setting to produce the samples. Three factors were chosen for design selection, which were runner size, gate location and number of cavity. The results show that the mould design with larger runner size (Test 1) can reduce several defects such as sink marks, weld-lines and air traps, as compared with the smaller runner size (Test 2). The best design is Design 1 with one cavity mould; because in terms of defects such as warpage, air traps and weld-lines, it has less value compared to others design. The best processing parameter was also obtained for this design. As for the conclusion, the findings of this project will be a good guidance in designing a mould that produced artefacts with integral hinges with minimum defects.