Dynamic Modeling and Control of Packing Pressure in Injection Molding

Abstract

A dynamic model of injection molding developed from physical considerations is used to select PID gains for pressure control during the packing phase of thermo-plastic injection molding. The relative importance of various aspects of the model and values for particular physical parameters were identified experimentally. The controller gains were chosen by pole-zero cancellation and root-locus methods, resulting in good control performance. Both open and closed-loop system responses were predicted and verified, with good overall agreement.