About Injection molding machine
Mould or tooling is the key point to produce the high precision plastic molded part. But the mold would not move by itself, and should be mounted on the injection molding machine or called press to form the product.
Injection molding machine is rated by tonnage or force, the smallest as i know is 50T, and the biggest can reach 4000T. The higher tonnage, the size of the machine is bigger. There is a new technology called high speed machine emerged in recent years. It is driven by electric motor instead of hydraulic pump. So this kind of machine can reduce the molding circle time and improve the precision of the part and save the electric energy, but it is expensive and only applied on machines with tonnage lower than 860T.
When choosing the injection molding machine, we should consider several basic elements:
● Clamping force – actually it is the tonnage of the machine. A 150T injection molding machine can deliver 150T clamping force.
● Material – Mold flow index of the plastic material will influence the pressure the machine need. High MFI will require higher clamping force.
● Size – Generally, the bigger size the part is, the higher clamping force the machine need.
● Mold Structure – The number of cavities, the number of gates and the location of sprue will impact the required clamping force.
A rough calculation is using a clamping force constant of the plastic material to multiply the square centimeter of the part surface, the product is the required clamping force.
As a professional injection molding specialist, we would use mold flow software to make the accurate calculation and determine the right injection molding machine.
Post time: Aug-23-2021
