Effect of Parison Thickness and Blowing Pressure on Distribution of Wall Thickness in Extrusion Blow Molding

Blow molding is one of the most widely used processes for producing hollow plastic parts. In this process, the wall thickness uniformity of blow molded part is a prime concern. Processing parameters such as blowing pressure, melting temperature, and parison thickness affect the uniformity. In this paper, extrusion blow molding process for Peugeot 405 and Peugeot Pars water tanks has been studied by simulations and experiments. The effects of parison thickness in three levels and blowing pressure in two levels were investigated on the wall thickness of blow molded part. Parison thickness was varied by manipulating air gap between mandrel and die. The results indicated that the increase of blowing pressure had no effect on the part thickness. However, the parison thickness significantly influenced the thickness of molded part. Parison thickness was optimized by considering the weight and required strength of the part, so that, the material consumed was decreased. Also, Polyflow software was used to simulate the blow molding process. For this purpose, the initial parison geometry was experimentally determined by a measurement set-up, then the inflation process was simulated on this real parison. A good agreement was obtained between thicknesses of part in the experiments and simulations.