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Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding
The use of microfeature-enabled devices, such as microfluidic platforms and anti-fouling surfaces, has grown in both potential and application in recent years. Injection molding is an attractive method of manufacturing these devices due to its excellent process throughput and commodity-priced raw ma...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7570071/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32872383 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi11090819 |
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author | Dempsey, Daniel McDonald, Sean Masato, Davide Barry, Carol |
author_facet | Dempsey, Daniel McDonald, Sean Masato, Davide Barry, Carol |
author_sort | Dempsey, Daniel |
collection | PubMed |
description | The use of microfeature-enabled devices, such as microfluidic platforms and anti-fouling surfaces, has grown in both potential and application in recent years. Injection molding is an attractive method of manufacturing these devices due to its excellent process throughput and commodity-priced raw materials. Still, the manufacture of micro-structured tooling remains a slow and expensive endeavor. This work investigated the feasibility of utilizing additive manufacturing, specifically a Digital Light Processing (DLP)-based inverted stereolithography process, to produce thermoset polymer-based tooling for micro injection molding. Inserts were created with an array of 100-μm wide micro-features, having different heights and thus aspect ratios. These inserts were molded with high flow polypropylene to investigate print process resolution capabilities, channel replication abilities, and insert wear and longevity. Samples were characterized using contact profilometry as well as optical and scanning electron microscopies. Overall, the inserts exhibited a maximum lifetime of 78 molding cycles and failed by cracking of the entire insert. Damage was observed for the higher aspect ratio features but not the lower aspect ratio features. The effect of the tool material on mold temperature distribution was modeled to analyze the impact of processing and mold design. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7570071 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75700712020-10-29 Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding Dempsey, Daniel McDonald, Sean Masato, Davide Barry, Carol Micromachines (Basel) Article The use of microfeature-enabled devices, such as microfluidic platforms and anti-fouling surfaces, has grown in both potential and application in recent years. Injection molding is an attractive method of manufacturing these devices due to its excellent process throughput and commodity-priced raw materials. Still, the manufacture of micro-structured tooling remains a slow and expensive endeavor. This work investigated the feasibility of utilizing additive manufacturing, specifically a Digital Light Processing (DLP)-based inverted stereolithography process, to produce thermoset polymer-based tooling for micro injection molding. Inserts were created with an array of 100-μm wide micro-features, having different heights and thus aspect ratios. These inserts were molded with high flow polypropylene to investigate print process resolution capabilities, channel replication abilities, and insert wear and longevity. Samples were characterized using contact profilometry as well as optical and scanning electron microscopies. Overall, the inserts exhibited a maximum lifetime of 78 molding cycles and failed by cracking of the entire insert. Damage was observed for the higher aspect ratio features but not the lower aspect ratio features. The effect of the tool material on mold temperature distribution was modeled to analyze the impact of processing and mold design. MDPI 2020-08-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7570071/ /pubmed/32872383 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi11090819 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Dempsey, Daniel McDonald, Sean Masato, Davide Barry, Carol Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title | Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title_full | Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title_fullStr | Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title_full_unstemmed | Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title_short | Characterization of Stereolithography Printed Soft Tooling for Micro Injection Molding |
title_sort | characterization of stereolithography printed soft tooling for micro injection molding |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7570071/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32872383 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi11090819 |
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