Abstract

The Injection molding machine is one of the commonly used machines for the production of domestic and industrial plastic products, which differ in sizes, shapes, complexities, and applications. Inadequate pressure load to push the molten plastic pellets through to filling the mold during the molding processes is one of the problems reported in literature. Hydraulic pressure to force the melt into the mold is initiated from the hydraulic pump to the main spindle that often results to product defects. In this work, the characteristics of the pump driving the main spindle of an injection molding machine by an hydraulic motor is explored using the Afe Babalola University Ado Ekiti water plant as a case study. The research designed and simulated a hydraulic model with the FluidSIM® 5.1 and benchmarked with a workbench model. The feeding motion for the tool carriage was investigated with a hydraulic cylinder. The behavior of the pump was determined by analyzing the resultant curve from the experiment and simulation. It was discovered that for resource efficiency and sustainable production of plastic bottles with the injection molding machine, the shutoff valve should be set at 65o displacement angle. This angle resulted to the optimum pressure and flow rate for the hydraulic motor. The hydraulic motor also reaches its specified speed at the optimum displacement angle for the injection molding machine as the operation progresses.