Improving Flow Balance during Filling a Multi-cavity Mold with Modified Runner Systems

Multi-cavity injection molding has been regarded as low cost mass-production method for producing plastic products such as optical elements. However, the flow imbalance during filling a multi-cavity mold using symmetrical runner system is a serious problem. This paper is devoted to improving the flow balance by modifying the runner system design. For this purpose, four eight-cavity molds with four modified symmetrical runner systems are designed, constructed and tested. They are tapering H-type runners, pinned H-type runners, curved A runners, and curved B runners. The flow imbalance in each runner system is observed and measured with the aid of short-shot experiments. The experimental results indicate that the tapering H-type runner system can improve flow balance. The pinned H-type runner system fails to improve flow balance. The curved A and B runner system can reverse the imbalance trend, but the stability of the curved systems is poor at high melt temperature.