The Behavior of Shrinkage on PMMA in Injection Molding Compression Molding

Molding shrinkage is one of the problems to be solved in conventional injection molding. Despite many trying-out has been to solve it, intrinsic cause of shrinkage such as orientation and thermal exchange between melt and mold has not been solved yet. For reducing shrinkage and residual stress on molding, injection compression molding process was invented. In this study, experiments about effects of injection compression molding's parameters on shrinkage of PMMA molding were conducted and compared with conventional injection molding's shrinkage. Before the injection compression molding experiment, molding shrinkage rate was predicted by analyzing pvT diagram and was compared with the results of experiment. The shrinkage rate of injection compression molding was lower than convention injection molding's one which was different from the predicted shrinkage. The reason was observed that the experimental mold was not a proper type for injection compression, flowing backward of melt into nozzle and unreasonable mechanism of injection molding machine.