Gate location design in injection molding of an automobile junction box with integral hinges

Polymers such as polypropylene or polyethylene offer a unique feature of producing an integral or living hinge for automobiles, which can flex over a million times without causing a failure. However, due to increased fluidity resistance at hinges during molding, several defects such as short shot or premature failure can occur with the improper selection of gate locations. In this paper, a design guideline was induced by investigating resin flow patterns depending on several gate positions obtained by numerical analyses of a simple strip with a hinge. The analyses of the simple strip part showed that the resin at the hinge did not flow until the other side of the strip was filled. Once the resin at the hinge did not flow for a long time enough to be solidified, defects such as short shots or hesitation marks formed. For a practical application of the design guideline determined, four gate systems for an automobile junction box were designed. It was found that the properly determined gate location leads to better resin flow and shorter hesitation time. Finally, injection molding tryouts using a mold that was designed by one of the proposed gate systems were conducted. The experiments showed that hinges without defects could be produced by using the designed gate location to assure the induced design guideline to be reasonable.