1. Injection Molding Lab. Design of Experiments Practice

2. Objectives  Gain some hands-on experience with polymers, particularly injection molding  Apply Design of Experiments (DOE) methodology to an actual process

3. Experimental Plan  Experiment set 1 – small team project  A simple 2 3 factorial design  3 variables – clamp force, injection pressure, and injection time  Experiment set 2 – class project  A 2 6 factorial design  6 variables – 3 + clamp time, melt temperature, and mold temperature

4. Experimental Procedure Injection molding process

5. Hello. I am a production manager. This is a new injection molding machine! What is the best process condition???

6. OK. Don’t worry. You can apply Design of Experiments to your process. DOE is an efficient experimentation methodology. DOE provides the maximum experimental information for the least expense. DOE allows you to optimize the process in terms of quality and/or quantity

7. Variables  Melt temperature  Mold temperature  Clamping force  Clamping time  Injection pressure  Injection time

8. Check and Set up Melt temp. and Mold temp.

9. Adjust clamp force

10. Adjust injection pressure

11. Fill out hoppers

12. Press down the cover

13. Press to clamp

14. Press to inject & Measure holding time

15. Release to unclamp

16. Final product

17. Evaluate the product (Flash)

18. Group Best to Worst #10 (Best – No Flash) #1 (Worst – Huge Flash)

19. Evaluation Example Fill-out capability 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10