A study on the distinguishing responses of shrinkage and warpage to processing conditions in injection molding

A challenging task in injection molding industry is to minimize shrinkage and warpage (S&W) through optimal setting of molding conditions. In determining the relationship between molding conditions and product dimension, most existing literature considered S&W as a whole entity or focused on only one of them. The intention of this study was to distinguish these two terms, and perform a thorough analysis on the effect of operative conditions on S&W during injection molding process through a combination of experimental and numerical methods. Six process parameters with five levels were examined on a box-shaped product, and the single factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) was adopted in identifying the significance of each variable in the experiment. Results indicated that the effect of processing conditions on shrinkage is different from that on warpage. Specifically, packing pressure affects shrinkage most while packing time is the dominant factor in determining warpage. The reaction of shrinkage to packing pressure is monotonic, whereas the plot of warpage shows a U-shaped variation. A differential treatment of S&W can therefore help to enhance product quality. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012