Plastic Faucet Body With Embedded Copper Pipes for Leak-Safe Molding
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing faucet body manufacturing process is complex, costly, and suffers from poor sealing due to the need for secondary injection molding and assembly of sealing elements, which increases production time and costs.
Innovation Solution
A novel plastic faucet body is created using one-time integral injection molding with a die comprising a fixed mold, movable mold, and mold-core installing seat, featuring parallel water inlet channels and copper pipes, and utilizing sealing plugs and rings for improved sealing, allowing for one-mold multi-cavity production and reduced assembly processes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If secondary injection molding process is adopted to avoid metal casting complexity, then manufacturing cost and process complexity are reduced, but leakage at injection molding joint surface occurs and sealing performance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the water channel body and copper pipes into a single integral molded structure, eliminating the joint surface between separate components. The copper pipes are directly embedded in the plastic water channel body during one-time injection molding, creating a unified structure that prevents leakage while maintaining manufacturing efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The copper pipes are pre-positioned in the mold cavities before injection molding begins. The mold design includes dedicated cavities for copper pipes that are prepared in advance, allowing the plastic material to flow around and encapsulate the pipes during the molding process, ensuring proper positioning and sealing without subsequent assembly steps.
2Productivity
If one-time integral injection molding is used to simplify the process, then production efficiency and cost are improved, but achieving complex water channel structures with multiple channels and copper pipes becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The mold is divided into multiple independent cavities, each designed to form specific components (water channel body, copper pipes, sealing plugs) in a single injection cycle. The segmentation of the mold into specialized cavities allows complex structures to be produced simultaneously without increasing the number of production steps.
Solution Approach 2:
The mold cavity structure acts as an intermediary that translates the complex desired final product geometry into a manufacturable form. The cavity design includes features like embedded copper pipe holders, sealing plug positions, and multi-channel flow paths that guide the injection process to create the complex integrated structure in one step.
3Reliability
If multiple sealing elements are assembled between injection molding processes to ensure sealing, then sealing performance is improved, but production time and assembly complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The sealing plugs are integrated directly into the water channel body during the injection molding process itself, rather than being assembled separately. The mold design includes cavities for sealing plugs that are filled with plastic material in the same cycle as the main body, creating built-in sealing elements that eliminate assembly time and ensure consistent sealing quality.
Data Source
AI summary
A plastic faucet body and a die for molding the same are provided. The plastic faucet body comprises a left water inlet pipe and a right water inlet pipe, where a connecting cross-beam is disposed between the left water inlet pipe and the right water inlet pipe, the left water inlet pipe and the right water inlet pipe are embedded with a threaded copper pipe, respectively, the copper pipes are formed integrally with the plastic faucet body by means of a single stage process and are in communication with the corresponding left water inlet pipe and the right water inlet pipe, respectively.