Extension of sterolithography mold life using gas-assisted injection molding

Stereolithography (SL) molds show great promise for injection molding of limited number of parts, greatly reducing the time to product and production cost. However, they present challenges to designers because of their strength, thermal characteristics and shorter lifetimes compared to metal molds. Gas-assisted injection molding (GAIM) has been used to alleviate the problems of distortion and thermal damage. The use of GAIM makes it possible to produce a large number of parts compared to conventional injection molding in epoxy molds with higher quality. In this research solid models of the mold with different part geometry were created using CAD and copies of the mold insert were fabricated from epoxy using Stereolithography. The Stereolithography molds were injection molded by conventional and GAIM. Tool life and quality of the parts produced by these two processes were compared and tabulated. Results show that with GAIM the tool life of SL molds were extended at least by 115% with better part quality.