A Proposed Technique to Acquire Cavity Pressure Using a Surface Strain Sensor During Injection Compression Molding

Abstract

A new technique was proposed and experimentally verified for the cavity pressure acquisition in the injectioncompression molding (ICM). The surface strain of the fixed mold half and the cavity pressure were monitored simultaneously during ICM. In the compression stage, a directly proportional relationship between the cavity pressure and mold surface strain was found and determined via the regression analysis. By taking the advantage of this relationship, the cavity pressure profile with high accuracy was indirectly obtained from the nondestructive measurement of the mold surface strain. Moreover, the mold surface strain profile could indicate the part weight or thickness and the critical time when the part surface lost contact with the cavity surface in a large area. The monitoring of the mold surface strain could serve as an interesting alternative to the direct monitoring of the cavity pressure with respect to process and part quality control for ICM.