Today, the time-to-market for plastic products is becomingshorter, thus the lead time available for making the injectionmould is decreasing. There is potential for timesaving in themould design stage because a design process that is repeatablefor every mould design can be standardised. This paperpresents a methodology for designing the cavity layout forplastic injection moulds by controlling the geometrical para-meters using a standardisation template. The standardisationtemplate for the cavity layout design consists of the configur-ations for the possible layouts. Each configuration of the layoutdesign has its own layout design table of all the geometricalparameters. This standardisation template is pre-defined at thelayout design level of the mould assembly design. This ensuresthat the required configuration can be loaded into the mouldassembly design very quickly, without the need to redesign thelayout. This makes it useful in technical discussions betweenthe product designers and mould designers prior to the manu-facture of the mould. Changes can be made to the 3D cavitylayout design immediately during the discussions, thus savingtime and avoiding miscommunication.48115
This standardisation tem-plate for the cavity layout design can be customised easily foreach mould making company to their own standards.Keywords: Cavity layout design; Geometrical parameters;Mould assembly; Plastic injection mould design; Standardis-ation template1. IntroductionPlastic injection moulding is a common method for the massproduction of plastic parts with good tolerances. There are twomain items that are required for plastic injection moulding.They are the injection-moulding machine and the injectionmould. The injection-moulding machine has the mould mountedCorrespondence and offprint requests to: K. S. Lee, Department ofMechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 KentRidge Crescent, Singapore 119260. E-mail address: mpeleeks@nus.edu.sgReceived 8 January 2002Accepted 16 April 2002on it and provides the mechanism for molten plastic transferfrom the machine to the mould, clamping the mould by theapplication of pressure and the ejection of the formed plasticpart. The injection mould is a tool for transforming the moltenplastic into the final shape and dimensional details of theplastic part. Today, as the time-to-market for plastic parts isbecoming shorter, it is essential to produce the injection mouldin a shorter time.Much work had been done on applying computer techno-logies to injection mould design and the related field. Knowl-edge-based systems (KBS) such as IMOLD [1,2], IKMOULD[3], ESMOLD [4], the KBS of the National Cheng KangUniversity, Taiwan [5], the KBS of Drexel University [6], etc.were developed for injection mould design. Systems such asHyperQ/Plastic [7], CIMP [8], FIT [9], etc. are developed forthe selection of plastic materials using a knowledge-basedapproach. Techniques have also been developed for partingdesign in injection moulding [10–12].It has been observed that although mould-making industriesare using 3D CAD software for mould design, much time iswasted in going through the same design processes for everyproject. There is great potential for timesaving at the moulddesign stage if the repeatable design processes can be standard-ised to avoid routine tasks. A well-organised hierarchical designtree in the mould assembly is also an important factor [13,14].However, little work has been done in controlling the para-meters in the cavity layout design; thus this area will be ourmain focus. Although there are many ways of designing thecavity layout [15,16], mould designers tend to use only conven-tional designs, thus there is a need to apply standardisation atthe cavity layout design level.This paper presents a methodology for designing the cavitylayout for plastic injection moulds by controlling the parametersbased on a standardisation template. First, a well-organisedmould assembly hierarchy design tree had to be established.Then, the classification of the cavity layout configuration hadto be made to differentiate between those with standard con-figurations and those with non-standard configurations. Thestandard configurations will be listed in a configuration databaseand each configuration has its own layout design table thatcontrols its own geometrical parameters. This standardization  Fig. 1. Front insert (cavity) and back insert (core).template is pre-defined at the layout design level of the mouldassembly design.2. Cavity Layout Design for a PlasticInjection MouldAn injection mould is a tool for transforming molten plasticinto the final shape and dimensional details of a plastic part.Thus, a mould contains an inverse impression of the final part.Most of the moulds are built up of two halves: the front insertand the back insert. In certain mould-making industries, thefront insert is also known as the cavity and the back insert isknown as the core. Figure 1 shows a front insert (cavity) anda back insert (core). Molten plastic is injected into theimpression to fill it. Solidification of the molten plastic thenforms the part. Figure 2 shows a simple two-plate mouldassembly.Fig. 2. A simple mould assembly 腔体布局设计系统 英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_50463.html