A Study on the Effect of Water Assisted Injection Molding Process Parameters of ABS and PP by Experimental Design Overall Evaluation Criteria (OEC)

In this study optimization of Taguchi experimental design objective function was carried out to find out the optimum conditions in water assisted injection molding process of ABS and PP. To produce the specimens, a branched pipe mold with an overflow cavity and water injection nozzle was designed and manufactured. Considering the different objective functions in this process, optimization of Overall Evaluation Criteria (OEC) method was used. The bigger-the better quality characteristics for objective function of OEC was applied. In present research water penetration and shrinkage difference of specimens was choose as objective function and holding time, mold temperature and delay time was considered as control variables. A Taguchi M9 orthogonal standard array was used for experimental design and the analysis of variance (ANOVA) method was considered for statistical analysis. The OEC results indicated that in ABS, delay time has the most effect on specimens’ quality characteristics and mold temperature and delay time affected the quality characteristics respectively. Results also showed that in PP, the holding time was the most affective parameter and delay time and mold temperature has effect on the quality characteristics respectively.