Cooling efficiency enhancement using a rapid tool with a surface-cooled waterfall cooling channel

Abstract

The manufacturing technique known as investment casting has found extensive application in producing metal components featuring intricate geometries. The production efficiency of the wax patterns is an essential issue in the investment casting industry, especially for the mass production of wax patterns. A conformal cooling channel (CCC) performs the rapid uniform cooling process for injection molding. However, the significant pressure drop along the cooling channels is a distinct disadvantage of CCC. In this study, an innovative waterfall cooling channel (WCC) was proposed and implemented. The WCC cools the injected products by surface contact, replacing the conventional line contact to cool the injected products. The WCC was optimized using Moldex3D simulation software. Rapid tools with two kinds of cooling channels were designed and implemented. The cooling time of the molded part was investigated using a low-pressure wax injection molding machine. Considering a water cup characterized by a mouth diameter of 70 mm, a height of 60 mm, and a thickness of 2 mm, the experimental results confirmed that the use of WCC can save the cooling time of the product by about 265 s compared with the CCC. This result shows that the WCC can increase cooling efficiency by approximately 17.47% compared with conventional CCC.