Application of the Digital Twin for in process monitoring of the micro injection moulding process quality

In recent years, the interest in miniaturization of devices easier to wear or even to insert into the body and in general the interest in building lightweight and compact systems are greatly increased. For this reason, the field of micro manufacturing is becoming more and more strategic for modern industry. One critical aspect for the adoption of micro manufacturing technologies on large scale is the quality validation and metrology of components or devices with conventional technologies, such as vision systems or tactile profilometer. Indeed, these technologies hardly fit to be used on the micro devices due to their extremely reduced dimensions which cause a high risk of damaging the micro structured surface. For these reasons, one of the challenges in the micro manufacturing field is the study of methods and tools for the continuous monitoring of the micro production process, with the final aim to improve reliability. In this regard, this paper focuses on a typical micro manufacturing technology, such as micro injection moulding, and presents a methodological approach that can help companies to adopt a solution for optimizing their process leveraging the corresponding Digital Twin. The latter represents a mirror of the physical process that allows to monitor in-line its parameters, to compare them with any analytic model, and to supply specific variations of parameters to keep them always in optimal conditions. The paper also presents a proof of concept of the proposed approach that has been validated to prove the correctness and its capability to scale to a real case study.