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About:
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In a 2005 review article, injection molding control [8] after process setup was classified into three levels—machine control, process control, and quality control. Due to the lack of quality sensors and the process and quality relationship model, there is a potential opportunity for advancement in the optimization and control of the product quality in injection molding. Moreover, with further development of science and technology in injection molding, and the fact that there has been very little review of process sensing, this paper aims to review and summarize the research on intelligent injection molding in recent years. It will focus on sensing, optimization, and control so that readers will be able to obtain useful information and an overview of the intelligent injection molding process. This paper is outlined as follows. Section 1 provides a brief introduction of intelligent injection molding. Sections 2, 3, and 4 discuss sensing, optimization, and control methods for the injection molding process and present up-to-date developments in these fields. The last section provides a summary of and future directions for intelligent injection molding.
The sensing of the injection molding process is focused on the temperature, pressure, position, speed, etc., which reflect the physical state of the process. Temperature and pressure are the two fundamental physical variables that are the most important in the injection molding process. Furthermore, among various sensing technologies, temperature and pressure sensors are the most well developed and the most widely utilized. By means of sensing the temperature and pressure, one can obtain abundant information about the mold and polymer melt. With continuing technology development, some new methods have emerged in the field of injection molding. Some of them are capable of characterizing more variables besides temperature, pressure, position, and speed. This section will briefly introduce the conventional and emerging methods used in injection molding processes and the up-to-date research progress. Finally, a conclusion and analysis will be put forward and discussed.
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