• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.35-40
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• 2024

Injection molding is a process widely used across various industries for molding plastics, and it is the most commonly applied process in root industries utilizing molds. Among the different types of injection molding, insert injection molding, where busbars are used as inserts, is increasingly being applied in the electric vehicle industry. However, currently, the insert injection molding process is manually performed, with workers placing insert components by hand before injection molding. This results in issues related to productivity, safety, and quality. Additionally, there is a growing demand for automation of such production lines due to hazardous working conditions, economic difficulties in the manufacturing industry, and the decline in the labor force caused by an aging population. This study focuses on the application of an automated system for the insert injection molding process used in electric vehicles. The development of an automated system for the transport and insertion of insert components, as well as the inspection and stacking processes after injection, has resulted in over a 25% improvement in productivity and more than a 27% reduction in defect rates.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.6060-6065
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• 2013

Minimizing the height of the die roll is very important for maximizing the size of effective shear planes. In this study, the die roll change was investigated for the change in the amounts and clearance of the V-ring indentation. Shear analysis and experiments were conducted with the V-ring distance fixed to 2mm. Fine blanking die was applied to the die insert with different clearances. Several specimens were analyzed about the height of the die roll. As a result, the pressure of V-ring effectively inhibited the flow of materials. And the height of the die roll was lowest when the clearance between the die and punch was 1% of the material thickness.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.9 s.90
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• pp.667-672
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• 2006

Agglutination is one of the most commonly employed reactions in clinical diagnosis. In this paper, we have designed and fabricated nickel mold insert for injection molding of a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for the purpose of the efficient detection of agglutination. In the presented microfluidic lab-on-a-chip, two inlets for sample blood and reagent, flow guiding microchannels, improved serpentine laminating micromixer(ISLM) and reaction microwells are fully integrated. The ISLM, recently developed by our group, can highly improve mixing of the sample blood and reagent in the microchannel, thereby enhancing reaction of agglutinogens and agglutinins. The reaction microwell was designed to contain large volume of about $25{\mu}l$ of the mixture of sample blood and reagent. The result of agglutination in the reaction microwell could be determined by means of the level of the light transmission. To achieve the cost-effectiveness, the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip was realized by the injection molding of COC(cyclic olefin copolymer) and thermal bonding of two injection molded COC substrates. To define microfeatures in the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip precisely, the nickel mold inserts of lab-on-a-chip for the injection molding were fabricated by combining the UV photolithography with a negative photoresist SU-8 and the nickel electroplating process. The microfluidic lab-on-a-chip developed in this study could be applied to various clinical diagnosis based on agglutination.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.11-16
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• 2020

In this study, forming of carbon composite parts was performed using an injection/compression molding process. An impregnation of matrix is determined by ability of wet and flow rate between the matrix and reinforcement. The flow rate of matrix passing through the reinforcements is a function of permeability of reinforcement, a viscosity of matrix and pressure gradient on molding, and the viscosity of the matrix depends on the mold temperature, molding pressure and shear strain of matrix. Therefore, compression molding experiment was conducted using a heating mold in order to confirm the possibility of matrix impregnation. The impregnation of the matrix through the porosities between the woven yarns was confirmed by the cross-sectional SEM image of compression molded parts. An injection molding process was also performed at a short cycle time, high molding pressure and low mold temperature than those of compression experiment conditions. Deterioration of impregnation on the surface of molded parts were caused by these injection conditions and it could be the reason of decreasing the maximum tensile strength. In order to improve impregnation of matrix on the surface, injection/compression molding and insert-over molding were applied. As a result of applying injection/compression molding and insert-over molding, it was shown that the improvement of impregnation on the surface and the maximum tensile strength was increased about 2.8 times than the virgin matrix.