Optimized Injection Molding of Unfilled and Glass Filled PA6 Gears

Shrinkage behavior is a crucial problem in manufacturing plastic molded gear. This is because it negatively affects the dimensional stability and accuracy of the involute profile, as well as the concentricity, roundness, tooth spacing uniformity, and size of the gear. By integrating the Taguchi robust design, Grey relational analysis, and principal component analysis, we investigated the dimensional stability related to the shrinkage of tooth thickness, addendum circle, and dedendum circle of molded gear via the optimization of processing parameters and glass fiber reinforcement. The results revealed that the optimal combination of the processing parameters of the molded gear to achieve minimum shrinkage is melt temperature of 260°C, packing pressure of 60%, packing time of 5 s, and cooling time of 30 s. The melt temperature showed the highest comparability sequence among the four key process parameters examined, followed by packing pressure, cooling time, and packing time. Meanwhile, the presence of glass fibers induced higher deviations of tooth thickness, addendum circle, and dedendum circle than those of the unfilled polyamide 6 gears.