To reduce the cost of injection molding parts, there are usually the following directions: energy consumption reduction, cycle time reduction, reducing defective products and reducing the time and times of unplanned downtime. Today we mainly focus on the first two directions.
1. It is mainly divided into three parts: electric, heating and cooling
2.
*Will there be a big horse pulling a small car?
*Is the power and heating suitable? Is there a more efficient and economical way?
*Is there a better way of heat preservation to reduce heat and cold loss?
*Can we work in parallel? When system 1 is cooling down, system 2 is injecting. This remains to be discussed.
*Are all the speed options right? For example, screw rotation speed and cooling, heating speed, etc.
*Can the special screw be customized to improve efficiency?
*Is your valve open properly?
*Are there any other possible factors that may affect energy efficiency?
*Machine: do you maintain it fully and on time?
*Heating and cooling: is the possibility of heat loss eliminated during operation? For example, equipment insulation effect is not good, resulting in rapid heat exchange with the outside world, and then loss of efficiency. Has the scale in the cooling system been cleaned in time?
*Is it possible to recycle and regenerate the recovered energy?
2. Cycle time reduction
We know that the cycle time of injection molding is an important driver of injection cost. If the cycle time can be effectively shortened, the injection cost can be reduced to a large extent, of course, provided that the product quality is not sacrificed.
Good management comes from the decomposition of things. The benefits of decomposition are good classification, good assessment of the impact intensity on the results, the size of risk, the difficulty of implementation, the required resources and professional knowledge, etc.
We know that the injection cycle can be roughly divided into the following six categories:
1. Mold closing
2. Injection die
3. Pressure maintaining
4. Cooling
5. Mold opening
6. Ejecting parts
If we want to shorten the overall cycle time, we only need to shorten one of the above parts or basic scores. Before implementing the improvement program, we may divide the above situations into several categories:
1. Basic zero risk can be solved by common sense
For example, mold closing is basically the faster, the better
2. Medium risk can be solved by knowledge
For example, as long as the parts are not broken, the shorter the time is, the better, and the risk can be easily measured.
Or pressure maintaining, as long as we keep reducing the pressure maintaining time until the weight of the parts starts to become lighter. We know that in the process of injection molding, the parts first start to cool and solidify from the farthest place from the sprue. After the cooling and solidification of the sprue, no matter how long our holding time is, what it fills is only the sprue system, and it can not fill the parts, blindly increase the holding time, increase the cycle time, but also increase the material loss.
3. Higher risks need to be solved in class hours
The impact of our cooling speed and time on the quality of parts is invisible and intangible, and even worse, it is difficult to measure. At this time, it is necessary to conduct interdisciplinary micro research, such as the study of thermodynamics, thermal transformation, and under the current system conditions, what is the boundary of the system, to transcend the boundary, what is the new physical or chemical micro mechanism, how to conduct experiments, how to carry out parameter management, how to break through the technical boundary, and then obtain competitive advantage.
