O surgimento das tecnologias de prototipagem rápida (RP) e de ferramental rápido (RT) tem despertado interesse da indústria de moldes de injeção. O vazamento de termofixos com cargas metálicas possibilita a construção de moldes usando materiais compósitos, os quais apresentam maior resistência que os utilizados por outras técnicas RT. Neste trabalho foi estudado o comportamento térmico de moldes fabricados em epóxi/alumínio durante a injeção de polipropileno através de avaliações da estrutura e de propriedades mecânicas utilizando difração de raio X e ensaios de dureza e de tração. Os corpos-de-prova injetados no molde em compósito epóxi/alumínio apresentaram pequenas diferenças no grau de cristalinidade das superfícies analisadas e propriedades mecânicas semelhantes aos corpos-de-prova injetados em molde de aço. O estudo mostrou um razoável desempenho térmico do molde compósito durante a injeção de polipropileno evidenciando a viabilidade de utilização destes moldes na produção de pequenas séries de protótipos e de produtos neste termoplástico.

rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT) technologies are gaining increasing importance in the injection molding industry. Casting of resin/metal composites allows the construction of molds with greater resistance than those manufactured by other RT techniques such as Stereolithography. In this work, the thermal behavior of molds manufactured in epoxy/aluminum during the injection molding of polypropylene specimens was investigated. Structural and mechanical characterization of the molded specimens included X ray analysis, hardness and tensile testing. The samples presented small differences in the degree of crystallinity and similar mechanical properties in comparison with samples injected into steel molds. This study showed a reasonable thermal performance of the epoxy/aluminum mold during the injection molding of polypropylene, thus demonstrating the viability of using these molds to produce a few number of prototypes or products with this thermoplastic.

A fabricação de moldes por técnicas de prototipagem rápida, como a estereolitografia (SL), é considerada uma importante tecnologia no auxílio ao desenvolvimento de produtos de plástico moldados por injeção. Embora esta tecnologia se mostre vantajosa, a vida útil dos moldes pode ser bastante reduzida em decorrência, por exemplo, de forte adesão entre o polímero injetado e o material do molde SL. Neste trabalho é investigado o uso da técnica de recobrimento metálico com Ni-P por deposição electroless sobre moldes de injeção, fabricados por SL com a resina DSM SOMOS 7110®. Foram comparados resultados de moldagem de PA6.6 em moldes fabricados com e sem recobrimento metálico evidenciando a possibilidade de utilizar a técnica de metalização como alternativa para a moldagem deste material em moldes SL, uma vez que a vida útil foi superior.

Manufacturing of moulds by rapid prototyping processes, such as stereolithography (SL), is considered an important technology to aid the development of injection moulding plastic products. Although this technology shows significant advantages, the lifetime of moulds may be drastically be reduced due to strong adhesion between the injected polymer and the material of the SL mould. This work investigates the use of Ni-P metal coating obtained by electroless deposition on SL moulds manufactured with the resin DSM SOMOS 7110. Specimens of PA6.6 have been injected into SL moulds manufactured with and without metal coating. The results showed that the electroless metal coating process can be an appropriate alternative to allow moulding of small series of PA6.6 parts in SL moulds.

The utilization of stereolithography molds in the manufacture pre-series for injection molded plastic parts aims to reduce costs throughout the product life-time, but mainly during design and manufacturing phases. The use of this Rapid Tooling technique in powder metal injection molding is evaluated in this work. One of the greatest differences between traditional and stereolithography tools is related to the heat conductivity of the materials employed. For example, steel molds have a heat conductivity coefficient 300 times higher than molds made with the photosensitive resin used in the stereolithography process. The discrepancy regarding the cooling rate of the molded parts during the injection cycle must be compensated with adjustments in the injection molding parameters, such as temperature, pressure and speed. The optimization of these parameters made it possible to eject green parts from the mold without causing defects which would become evident in debinding and sintering stages. The dimensional analysis performed at the end of each case study showed that the shrinking factor of the component after the sintering had the same value obtained for components using traditional metallic molds. Moreover, the dimensional error remains under 2% which can be considered low for a pre-series of components (or prototype series).

The design of injection mould inserts obtained by stereolithography (SL) has various recommendations that are based on experimental work done by researchers over the last decade. There are no final conclusions about the best cooling technique for SL inserts. Moreover, no criteria are presented concerning structural and thermal designs based on stress-strain analysis, although a number of researchers consider ejection forces as the main failure effect of the SL tool. This work presents an alternative technique to cool down SL inserts, based on heat flux canals that are strategically positioned on hot areas along the cavity walls. Using this approach it is possible to keep direct contact between the back metal filling of the stereolithography insert and the injected thermoplastic material. This paper shows the results of aspects such as thermal evaluation in a FEM analysis, where the heat flux canals, solid SL moulds and the traditional Direct AIM™ process performances have been compared. The results indicate that this evolution of the Direct AIM™ process may improve the average life of SL inserts while keeping the traditional one-week development for the tool.