A study of warpage and weld line in a composite motorcyle engine oil cover using mold flow analysis software

Abstract

Today’s emphasis is placed on lowering production cost and weight. By replacing the metal with plastic composites, it is said to be achieved the goals compared with aluminum equivalent. Motorcycle engine oil cover is a subframe of motorcycle attached to the near end of a main frame of the motorcycle. It is made up of ADC 10 alloy thru the high-pressure die casting process. For replacing the material of this part, Polyamide 6 has been chose based on its properties that is most alike the present material; aluminum alloy. Changing the material of the part lead to changed in the manufacturing process too. The plastic injection molding is the best process to be applied. Then, the injection parameters that lead to warpage and weld line is determined. Mold temperature, melt temperature, packing pressure, packing time, filling time, injection pressure, injection time and cooling time is said to be the injection parameters in optimizing the warpage and weld line. Next, the experiments are conducted by utilizing Moldflow Plastic Insight (MPI). Based on the results obtained, the optimization step begin using Design of Experiment (DOE) on Taguchi Method that applying L18 21 37 from the Orthogonal Array (OA). Results which have been obtained from the 18 trials of experiments are analyzed to get the optimum condition and predicted value. The last stage is confirmation test to see the percentage of error comparing with the actual value. All results have been discussed.