Investigation of Product and Process Fingerprints for Fast Quality Assurance in Injection Molding of Micro-Structured...

Area of Science:

• Manufacturing Engineering
• Materials Science
• Quality Control

Background:

• Injection molding is a cost-efficient manufacturing process for polymer components.
• Traditional metrological inspections for quality control are time-consuming and can lead to significant waste if issues are detected late.
• There is a need for rapid, in-process quality monitoring systems in injection molding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an alternative approach for process monitoring and quality control of injection molded parts.
• To introduce the concept of "Product and Process Fingerprints" for real-time quality assessment.
• To correlate in-mold and machine processed data with part quality indicators.

Main Methods:

• Developed a concept of "Product and Process Fingerprints" using calculated indices.
• Employed a statistically designed set of experiments to map the experimental space.
• Quantified micro-feature replication based on position and processing parameters.

Main Results:

• Identified several "Product and Process Fingerprints" that correlate well with micro-feature quality.
• Demonstrated that these fingerprints are dependent on feature geometry and location.
• Confirmed the potential of fingerprints as indirect indicators of part quality.

Conclusions:

• The "Product and Process Fingerprints" concept can support a rapid quality monitoring system.
• This approach has the potential to decrease reliance on off-line, time-consuming metrology.
• The fingerprints can serve as an early warning system during the manufacturing process.