Prediction of Moulds Wear in High Pressure Die Casting and Plastic Injection Moulding

High Pressure Die Casting and Plastic Injection Moulding are very cost effective and high production rate manufacturing processes. Both consist of introducing at high pressure, high temperature and high speed a fluid material that solidifies inside a mould.

These moulds have to endure thousands of cycles on this aggressive media, which leads to a wear amount that limits the mould life, requiring repairing, as well as unexpected production stops.

This involves high cost in maintenance and reparation. The damage of the moulds is ruled by different wear mechanisms. Some of them are common for both manufacturing processes like erosion and corrosion, while some others, are specific like abrasion in Plastic Injection Moulding and die soldering and thermal fatigue in High Pressure Die Casting. This doctoral thesis deals with all these wear mechanisms, setting protocols to simulate them at laboratory scale and studying the influence of different process parameters, in order to predict the wear of moulds.