Metallic Insert with Conical Grooves for Plastic Anchoring
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing plastic inserts lack optimal penetration and anchoring in plastic materials, leading to cavity formation, leaks, and reduced extraction and torsional resistance, which increases costs due to scrap reduction in molding processes.
Innovation Solution
A metallic insert with a prismatic side surface featuring longitudinal splines and intersecting circumferential grooves with conical sidewalls is used, allowing for enhanced penetration and filling of the plastic material, eliminating air pockets and ensuring a secure anchoring.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional inserts without circumferential grooves are used, then the structure is simpler, but cavity formation occurs and penetration is suboptimal
Solution Approach 1:
The insert's side surface is segmented into multiple circumferential grooves that divide the surface into distinct zones. These grooves create separate penetration paths for the plastic material, ensuring complete filling without air pocket entrapment. The segmentation of the surface geometry directly resolves the cavity formation issue while maintaining manufacturing feasibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention introduces circumferential grooves that add a dimensional feature to the insert's side surface. These grooves create a three-dimensional geometry with varying depths and profiles (e.g., trapezoidal cross-sections), transforming the flat surface into a multi-level structure that promotes complete material penetration and eliminates cavities.
2Strength
If circumferential grooves with conical sidewalls are used, then extraction and torsional resistance are improved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The grooves are designed with specific geometric parameters including conical sidewalls with controlled slant angles (α, β) ranging from 3° to 60°. These parameter optimizations ensure that the groove geometry promotes complete plastic material penetration while maintaining manufacturability through standard machining processes. The parameter ranges balance performance requirements with manufacturing constraints.
3Reliability
If the grooves are completely filled with plastic material, then anchoring is optimized, but air entrapment increases during filling
Solution Approach 1:
The circumferential grooves feature conical sidewalls with curved surfaces that facilitate air evacuation during the injection molding process. The conical geometry with controlled slant angles creates a pathway that allows air to escape laterally as the plastic material fills the grooves from the ends, preventing air pocket entrapment while ensuring complete filling for optimal anchoring.
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
This configuration achieves optimal anchoring, eliminates leaks, and reduces molding costs by minimizing scrap, while enhancing extraction and torsional resistance of the insert.
Implementation Method 1
the sidewalls 18a, 18b of the groove have respective slant angle α, β with respect to the perpendicular to the central axis of the body of the insert. Preferably, the slant angle α, β of the walls of the groove is in the range from 3° to 60°, and it depends also on the depth h of the groove. Such a configuration of the grooves allows an optimal penetration of the plastic material to be achieved, and therefore an optimal filling up of the grooves during the process of insertion of the insert into the plastic material. In fact, conicity of the walls of the grooves promotes ejection of air contained in them when they are filled up by the plastic material.
Data Source
Figure 1~5
AI summary
An insert (10; 10') adapted to be inserted into a plastic material consists of a body (12) of a metallic material having a side prismatic surface (14). A respective longitudinal spline (16) is formed on at least one of the faces of the prismatic side surface of the insert, which extends along its directrix. Moreover, at least a circumferential groove (18) is formed in the prismatic side surface of the insert, which intersects the longitudinal spline. The circumferential groove has conical sidewalls (18a, 18b).