Date of Award

10-5-2017

Publication Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.Sc.

Department

Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering

Supervisor

Henshaw, Paul

Supervisor

Johrendt, Jennifer

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to address a manufacturing problem related to the technology of Film Insert Molding (FIM) for the production of vehicle interior parts. The problem occurs in the first stages of the process during the production of the film, prior to injection molding. The film was distorted in some cases. When the distortion of the film was high, the film was not sticking to the mold properly, showing a tendency to pop out. This led to pinching of the film in the mold which caused two main failures: flashing of the resin and ripping of the film. A particular emphasis was put toward the process stages of forming and UV curing, that were identified through a root causes analysis, to induce major distortion of the shape of the film. With the use of a laser scanner and analysis software: Geomagic control X, it was possible to compare the shape of manufactured parts to the original CAD model containing the nominal shape of the film. The analysis was based on two full-factorial plans, one for forming of the film and one for UV curing it. Using analysis of the variance (ANOVA) of the deviations, it was possible to detect the influence of the factors on particular points of the surface of the film. It was found that parameters related to forming: dwell time and temperature, had a significant influence on the deviation of the film, the first accounting for about 50% of the change in deviation. Once the forming parameters were set to achieve the lowest deviation, parameters related to UV curing: UV oven conveyor speed and ink size, did not have an high influence on the distortion of the film.

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