Tobias Vieten

Zusammenfassung

The production of injection-molding prototypes, e.g., molded interconnect devices (MID) prototypes, can be costly and time-consuming due to the process-specific inability to replace durable steel tooling with quicker fabricated aluminum tooling. Instead, additively manufactured soft tooling is a solution for the production of small quantities and prototypes, but producing complex parts with, e.g., undercuts, is avoided due to the necessity of additional soft tooling components. The integration of automated soft slides into soft tooling has not yet been investigated and poses a challenge for the design and endurance of the tooling. The presented study covers the design and injection-molding trial of soft tooling with integrated automated slides for the production of a complex MID prototype. The design further addresses issues like the alignment of the mold components and the sealing of the complex parting plane. The soft tooling was additively manufactured via digital light processing from a silica-filled photopolymer, and 10 proper parts were injection-molded from a laser-direct structurable glass fiber-filled PET+PBT material before the first damage on the tooling occurred. Although improvements are suggested to enhance the soft tooling durability, the designed features worked as intended and are generally transferable to other part geometries.

Zusammenfassung

In order to economize injection molded prototypes, additive manufacturing of, e.g., curable plastics based tools, can be employed, which is known as soft tooling. However, one disadvantage of such tools is that the variothermal process, which is needed to produce polymeric parts with small features, can lead to a shorter lifespan of the tooling due to its thermally impaired material properties. Here, a novel concept is proposed, which allows to locally heat the mold cavity via induction to circumvent the thermal impairment of the tooling material. The developed fabrication process consists of additive manufacturing of the tooling, PVD coating the mold cavity with an adhesion promoting layer and a seed layer, electroplating of a ferromagnetic metal layer, and finally patterning the metal layer via laser ablation to enhance the quality and efficiency of the energy transfer as well as the longevity by geometric measures. This process chain is investigated on 2D test specimens to find suitable fabrication parameters, backed by adhesion tests as well as environmental and induction tests. The results of these investigations serve as proof of concept and form the base for the investigation of such induction layers in actual soft tooling cavities.