Effects of cooling channel layout on the cooling performance of rapid injection mold

Conformal cooling channels (CCCs) are a cooling passageway which follows the profile of the mold cavity or core to perform uniform cooling process effectively in the injection molding process. The production cost is closely related to productivity. To further improve productivity, the injection mold was equipped with CCCs to shorten the cooling time of the injection molded part. To investigate the relationship between the cooling channel layout and cooling efficiency of the CCCs, silicone rubber molds (SRMs) with different layouts of cooling systems were designed and constructed in this study. Simulation software was utilized to study the cooling performance. To verify the results of the simulation, SRM with different cooling systems were fabricated for low-pressure wax injection molding. It was found that the cooling time of the injection molded part is indeed affected by the total surface area of the heat exchange between the coolant and the SRM. The cooling system with four inlets and four outlets seems to be the optimum layout of the SRM in the case study in terms of the difficulty of mold making, total surface area of the heat exchange between the coolant and the SRM, and total cooling flow length of each segment. The saving in the cooling time about 2796 s and improvement of cooling efficiency about 76% can be obtained when the SRM with four inlets and four outlets was used for injection molding. The findings in this study can be used as a reference to design CCCs of injection mold built with AM technology.