Team 26
Team Members |
Faculty Advisor |
Pamela Nguyen |
Julian Norato Sponsor Other |
sponsored by
Heise Industries
Optimization of Blow Mold Cooling Designs
Heise Industries is a world-class leader in the blow-molding industry, as they create custom extrusion blow molds for their customers. The goal of this project was to provide a technical understanding of the current cooling process of Model X053AO, and ultimately come up with different cooling channel layouts. The proposed and selected designs are meant to increase the efficiency of the mold as reflected by a 20% reduction in cycle time. The current mold design utilizes straight-drilled channels, and one cycle takes approximately 21.6 seconds. This process was modeled in order to verify the validity of the remodels. Research was conducted to provide more effective methods of cooling, and shows how one of the most promising methods is through the use of conformal cooling channels. This allows for better heat extraction as the shape of the channels adhere more closely to that of the mold cavity. Some of the other designs suggest usage of non-circular channel cross sections, and even those which are not uniform within diameter. All of these lend to increase the turbulent flow which is a vital part in reducing the cooling time. Additionally, the inclusion of baffles can allow for more heat to be removed in areas where the geometry is more complex or constricted.