Improvement in the Cooling Efficiency of Conformal Mold Cooling by Using Extended Surface Concept

Objectives of this research work was to increase efficiency of conformal cooling system in plastic injection molding by using cooling channel with extended surfaces or fins. The effect of fin shapes (triangle, trapezoid and rectangle) on the cooling efficiency was investigated by using plastic flow analysis and simulation program, Moldex3D R11.0. The cooling channel with various fin shapes was design based on limitation of direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process. The simulation results showed that the fins added in the cooling channel significantly decreased cooling times and part average temperature. The fin shape insignificantly affected the cooling time. However, the cooling channel with seven trapezoidal fins showed the lowest cooling time and part average temperature but required the highest cooling pressure.