Injection Molded Component With Shrinkage Protrusions
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Large injection molded components, such as lens arrays, face challenges in maintaining shape accuracy due to shrinkage during the molding process, which can affect light distribution and is difficult to monitor cost-effectively, especially in mass production environments.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating a quality control portion with protrusions that are susceptible to visible deformation from shrinkage, allowing for visual inspection to identify and flag issues, without interfering with the functional portion's purpose, and enabling early detection of injection molding defects.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If injection molding is used for large lens plates, then production efficiency is improved, but shape accuracy deteriorates due to shrinkage
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates a quality control portion with protrusions into the mold cavity before injection molding. These protrusions are strategically designed to be susceptible to visible deformation from shrinkage, allowing for early detection of molding issues before production defects occur. This preliminary quality control mechanism enables real-time monitoring and adjustment during the molding process.
Solution Approach 2:
The quality control protrusions serve as intermediary indicators that mediate between the invisible shrinkage process and visible quality assessment. By observing the deformation of these protrusions, operators can infer the degree of shrinkage and adjust molding parameters accordingly, without needing to inspect every optical surface directly.
2Measurement precision
If laser scanning is used to monitor optical surface accuracy, then measurement precision is improved, but cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of using expensive laser scanning equipment for every inspection, the patent employs simple visual inspection of the quality control protrusions. These protrusions act as disposable indicators that can be easily observed without sophisticated equipment, dramatically reducing inspection costs while maintaining adequate quality control for mass production.
Solution Approach 2:
The quality control portion is self-inspecting through visual observation of protrusion deformation. The molded component itself provides the inspection mechanism through its quality control protrusions, eliminating the need for external expensive measurement equipment. Operators can visually assess shrinkage by observing these protrusions directly on the molded product.
3Reliability
If detailed optical analytical testing is performed on each product, then reliability is improved, but productivity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The quality control protrusions perform preliminary quality assessment during the molding process itself. By detecting shrinkage issues at the source through visual inspection of protrusion deformation, the system prevents defective products from entering later testing stages, maintaining high reliability while enabling rapid mass production without detailed optical testing of every unit.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables low-cost, visual monitoring of injection molding quality across a large number of components, allowing for timely identification and prevention of sub-standard products, particularly beneficial for large components where shape accuracy is critical, like lens plates, reducing the need for extensive photometric testing.
Implementation Method 1
shrinkage which occurs during the molding process
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~5
Figure 6A~6F
AI summary
An injection molded component has a functional portion and a quality control portion. The quality control portion comprises a set of protrusions which are adapted to distort visibly in response to injection molding shrinkage, thereby to enable visual quality control inspection.