Cost-Efficient Injection Mold Design: A Holistic Approach to Leveraging Additive Manufacturing’s Design Freedom Through Topology Optimization

Additive manufacturing offers significant design freedom for injection mold tooling, particularly in optimizing cooling performance and reducing mass. This study presents a holistic framework for the topology optimization of mold inserts considering design for additive manufacturing principles, integrating essential boundary conditions from the mold making, injection molding process, and post-processing operations. A slider component with conformal cooling channels serves as the case study. Using simulation-driven design and finite element analysis, two design variants, based on conventional and modified design spaces, were evaluated. Mechanical loads from clamping and the injection process were considered, with safety factors applied to reflect industrial misuse scenarios. The topology optimization process was implemented using Altair OptiStruct and validated through displacement and stress analyses. The results show savings in both mass and costs of up to 60% while maintaining structural integrity under operational and misuse conditions. The maximum displacements—only a 4 µm increase compared to the reference—remained within DIN ISO 20457 tolerances, and stresses did not exceed 170 MPa under operational conditions, confirming industrial applicability. This study concludes with a proposed framework for integrating topology optimization into mold design workflows.