Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU AEM PROGRAM

Zachary Roe
Educational Injection Molding

EKU

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

Introduction
Plastics are used everywhere. Everyday throughout the world plastics are
used in a wide array of applications. If you can name it most everything that
we use daily has at least one if not multiple plastic components. Where we
all use plastics every single day, we may take for granted the actual
processes that go into making the plastics. To simplify you heat up a resin
and inject the resin into a mold. But, everything must be exact if the
temperature is off you may see a semi-solid mold, which will melt as soon as
you touch it. Or, if the temperature isnt warm enough you may see the
resins not heat up enough in order to allow the resin to flow into the mold.
All plastics exhibit different characteristics. When picking which resin to use
Electrical Resistance, elongation, melting point, density, thermal conductivity
and flammability are just a few of the characteristics that must be
considered. There are many more characteristics but these are just to name
a select few. The resins also come in different forms in the application for this
lab ours required LDPE pellets.
Looking at an overview of the performed lab is actually quite simple. The
resin is heated in the barrel then once a certain temperature is reached the
resin is plunged into the mold with a plunger. In this lab the injection
molding converts granular pellets into final molded parts via a melt, inject,
pack and cool cycle.

Objectives

Practice the educational purpose injection molding process

Gain understanding of importance of temperature setup

Equipment Used

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

Injection Molding Machine

LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene)
Screwdriver mold

Dye Resin
Stoner Spray Solution
Screwdriver

EKU

Lab Description and Results

In this lab we first started by ensuring all equipment was in working order.
You must turn the air on so that the PSI for the plunger will reach 80 PSI. If
this air pressure isnt attained then there may not be sufficient force to

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

plunge the resin into the mold. Second, if the PSI is too high the plunger may
go too fast forcing material through at a quicker rate than the mold is
designed for. After this you make sure the barrel and nozzle are both heated
to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. This may take some time to obtain it took us
about 15 minutes to reach the desired temperature. Make sure that the
barrel and nozzle arent over the 375 degrees otherwise the mold may not
cool and form.
From here you take the mold and align the injection point directly under the
barrel of the mold. Our group practiced shooting a few blanks in order to
make sure we would align the nozzle with the mold when we were going to
actually try to produce a mold. You must align the depth so the hole lines up
with the nozzle, but also you must ensure that horizontally you are clamped
or otherwise the mold wont form in such a manner that a quality product is
produced.
On our first try the temperature acquired was only 370 degrees but we
decided to try anyway. When the plunger forced down I noticed slight
resistance, but otherwise the injection went flawlessly and no excess resin
was creeping out of the sides of the mold. This seemed to be a good sign
except when we opened the mold. We realized there was still blue dye resin
in the machine and the blue resin hadnt fully melted. This was noted for
when we would need to use the dye. You can see in the picture that the
resin is still rough.

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

After this we decided to try again with the barrel around 380 degrees. But,
we made a huge mistake we only waited about 3 minutes for the resin to
attempt to melt and I think the picture says it all with what happened. There
wasnt enough melted material to fill the mold. So after a brief pause (8
minutes) we fully filled the mold with a quality product. But, I forgot to take a
picture of the finished product.

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

From here we were instructed to add blue LDPE resin to the injection
machine. Based upon our prior observation that the machine needed to be
heated a bit more for this dye we cranked it up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
After waiting about 11 minutes we decided to take a shot and produced one
of our best products. The product ended up being very strong with no molten

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

resin on the inside.

Answers to Questions
We learned various items while performing this lab. First, we learned when
the resin was added that you must up the temperature to account for the
difference in material to allow them to melt together. One can only assume
that the melting point of the blue dye resin was slightly higher than the
melting point of the plain LDPE.
Second, I explained all the finished products when the temperature was
370 to 380 you could produce a quality product with LDPE alone but when
the blue resin was added it needed to be between 400 and 410 degrees. You
must make sure all the material required is fully melted but not so melted
that the plastic burns.

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

Third, if a mold was needed I would produce a pawn.

Conclusions
This lab was very educational and I learned quite a bit not just about
injection molding but about LDPE. In order to improve I would put an autoalign feature on the injection molding machine so that you are ensured you
cant miss the mold.

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

Appendix

EKU

Zachary Roe

A. Actual Lab

Educational Injection Molding

EKU

Zachary Roe

Educational Injection Molding

EKU