Investigation of Micro Injection Moulding: Preliminary Results

Micro injection moulding process represents a key technology for realizing micro components and micro devices used in several fields: IT components, biomedical and medical products, automotive industry, telecommunication area and aerospace. The development of new micro parts is highly dependent on manufacturing systems that can reliably and economically produce micro components in large quantities. In this work the authors investigate the process parameters on the overall quality of a miniaturized dog-bone shaped specimen. The factors affecting micro flow behavior and components mass were studied by experimentation (designed using DoE methodology) and simulation tool and then discussed. Different polymer materials, particularly indicated for the injection molding applications due to their flowability and stability, are tested and evaluated in relation to the process replication capability. It has been found that the holding pressure and holding time for Polyoxymethylene (POM) and holding pressure and injection velocity for Liquid Cristal Polymer (LCP) have the higher influence on achieving high part mass.