Moldflow Shrinkage & Warpage Analysis

Warpage occurs when there are variations of internal stresses in the material caused by a variation in shrinkage. Warped parts may not be functional or visually acceptable.

• Non-uniform cooling.
  

  Temperature differences from one side of the mold to the other can lead to layers freezing and shrinking at different times and generating internal stresses.
  
  

• Inconsistent shrinkage.
  
  Resulting from:
  1. Material variations such as property variations, Fillers, varying moisture content, inconsistent melt and pigmentation;
  2. Process conditions variations such as inconsistent packing and varying mold and melt temperatures;
  3. Machine variations such as a damaged check ring and unstable controller.

Part Shrinkage

MPI/Warp calculates shrinkage and warpage in injection molded plastic parts and predicts where deformations will occur. Results allow Imtech to optimize design, material, and processing parameters to control part warpage before the mold is built.

Deflection Results

With MPI/Warp, even the most demanding application that requires high dimensional stability, excellent visual appearance, and accurate fit with mating components can be produced to quality, time, and budgetary specifications. In mold compensation is also possible. By exporting a inverse model from Moldflow toolmakers are able to compensate for unavoidable distortion in the mold.

Shrinkage & Warpage Analysis Capability:

Evaluate final part shape before machining the mold

Evaluate both single cavity and multi-cavity molds

Scale shrinkage and warpage results for better visualization of deformation

Query any two points to determine any dimensional change between the two

Constrain the part on a plane for better measurement of deflection

Separate total displacement into X-, Y-, and Z-axis displacements to show only the deflection in each direction

Show shrinkage and warpage as a visible displacement plot or as a color contour or shaded plot

Export warp geometry in the STL format to use as a reference when sizing the mold

Export warp mesh model for an iterative warpage analysis

Features:

Small Deflection Analysis: Linear Solver


Large Deflection Analysis: Non linear Solver

Geometric non-linear large deflection
Predicts the deformed shape after buckling
Features load or displacement control

Single Variant Analysis: Isolate cause of distortion

Isolates and predicts the effects on warpage components including:
- Molecular/fiber orientation
- Cooling variations
- Shrinkage variations
- Corner effects

Moldflow Plastic Adviser, Moldflow Mpi, Mold flow communicator and Mold Adviser are Mould flow software products for simulating the injection molding of plastic materials. Moldflow is the registered trademark Moldflow Corporation & Moldflow Europe ltd as advised in many trade magazine publications and press releases.

Imtech Design are Moldflow Gold Certified Plastic Flow Simulation Consultants and Engineers.