IRACST – Engineering Science and Technology: An International Journal (ESTIJ), ISSN: 2250-3498 Vol.5, No.1, February 2015 197 Review of Optimization Aspects for Plastic Injection Molding Process Mr. Aditya M. Darekar Research Student Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Fr. Agnel Ashram, Bandra (W) Prof. T. S. Venkatesh Associate Professor Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Fr. Agnel Ashram, Bandra (W) Dr. Bhushan T. Patil Associate Professor Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Fr. Agnel Ashram, Bandra (W) Mr Yazad N. Doctor Research Student Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering, Fr. Agnel Ashram, Bandra (W) Abstract—Plastic molding processes are used to produce plastic parts and components, which finds applications in many industrial as well as household consumer products. Plastic injection molding is really a challenging process for designers, researchers and manufacturers to produce the components or products at low cost, meeting all the necessary requirements from the customers.In today’s plastic age, injection molding industry is facing a huge competition. Using a conventional trial-and-error approach for finding out the desired processing conditions for molding is not good enough to sustain in the global market. Many product designing, mold designing aspects as well as large number of process parameters need to be optimized in order to meet customer requirements and expectations regarding quantity, quality and performance of the product at a competitive price. This paper aims to provide an insight of literatures about recent research in optimization aspects for determining optimum process parameters of plastic injection molding. Keywords-Plastic Injection Molding; Optimization; Design of Experiments; Simulation; Moldflow Analysis I. INTRODUCTION Plastic Injection Molding process has been a very challenging process for many manufacturers and researchers to make a component meeting all the expectations of the customer at low cost and in minimum time. In today’s rapidly rising market demand, injection molding holds the responsibility of a mass production of the plastic components. Hence every manufacturer has to take care that the cycle time of the molding process is optimized properly to meet the market demand. But along with reducing the cycle time and lowering the production cost, one of the main goal in injection molding is the improvement of quality of molded parts and maintaining the same throughout all the batches. The complexity involved in the process and the number of process parameters manipulation during real time production creates lot of effort to maintain the process under control. Solving the problems related to the quality of the molding has a direct effect on the expected profit for injection molding industries. [1] In injection molding, quality characteristics are classified as mechanical properties, dimensional or measurable properties and attributes. In general, some of the main causes of quality related problems are categorized as follows. • Material related defects such as black specks and splays. • Filling related problems such as short fills, flash. • Packing and cooling related defects such as sink marks, voids. • Post mold related defects such as warpage, dimensional changes and weight change. Defect mentioned above except material related defects are mainly caused due to improper selection of the processing conditions during production. Traditionally analytical and then experimental trial-and-error approach were used to regulate the molding process for getting good quality and finish on molded product.This trial-and-error process completely depends on the engineers’ or manufacturers’ knowledge, experience and intuitions to determine initial process parameter settings. Such trial-and-error process is costly and time consuming, thus it is not suitable for complex manufacturing processes like Plastic Injection Molding. However, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Simulation using computer software packages has become popular and nowadays preferred in industry because it is cost effective, less time consuming and equally effective in predicting the desired process conditions as well as the defects estimation in product. Simulation technology combined with the optimization techniques have been used for improving design quality and shorten the design cycle.