This work investigates the influence of injection molding process parameters on the quality of a polymer micromixer manufactured using soft tooling. The mold inserts were fabricated using vat photopolymerization and employed as tooling inserts for injection molding. Eight batches of molded parts were produced using different combinations of injection molding process parameters. The study examined the effects of injection speed, injection pressure, and mold temperature on the accuracy of microstructure replication. The dimensions of the mold inserts and molded parts were measured using a digital optical microscope and the collected data were analyzed using design of experiments methods. Due to a systematic error in one of the mold inserts, a Taguchi orthogonal array was used instead of a full factorial design. The results showed that mold temperature had the greatest influence on the quality of microstructure replication, while injection speed primarily affected groove depth and injection pressure mainly affected groove width.
|
