Team Tropical Escape has been hard at work this week with the first fabrications of each of our pieces. For it, we have been injection molding and creating/editing our molds.

A PDF of the write-up for our first injection molded parts can be found here.

The fabrication of our pieces has been exciting because it has allowed us to bring to life what we have designed and has also revealed to us many of the functioning and non-functioning parts. For each piece, we have had a problem, and through this have learned of the importance of beginning production early to allot time for debugging and fixing molds if needed. Within this past week, we've had to re-machine two molds. However, for those molds working from the start, we were able to start fabricating pieces. We have been using the ENGEL machine and experimenting with the following parameters to be able to reach the adequate production values: shot size, packing time, and cooling time.

For all parts, we have experimented with short shots, flashes, and some dishing. The process of fabricating the parts has not only taught us time management is critical, but it has also shown us many unaccounted or unexpected problems that had not been thought of before arise when preparing to produce parts. Furthermore, we have also learned that some issues can be fixed by switching parameters in the machine rather than re-doing a mold. For example, to decrease flashing, we have decreased the shot size. For the dishing occurring in our B, we will increase the injection pressure and the hold time.

In the upcoming days, we will be optimizing our parameters and testing them to begin the fabrication of our production pieces.

 

Below are pictures of our molds along with pictures of produced parts.


  • All the molds and some fabricated parts scattered around

 

  • From L to R: Bitcoin (B) mold, B overmold mold, cavity mold

 

  • Fabricated Bs

Note: We have noticed the line in the top left edge indicating the meeting of two flowing points for the B. To eliminate this, we will experiment with increasing shot size and increasing the injection pressure.


  • Overmolded Bs

 

  • Stockline

 

  • Stockline overmold

         

 

 

  • Snap rings are not fitting with the dome of both sides. Mold might need to be re-machined because the snap-fit interference with the B overmold is not aligning.


              

 

  • Thermoforming pieces
     
     

 

More updates will be coming soon!

 



 

Team Tropical Escape!

 

 


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