Conditions of rib design for polycarbonate resin with high glossy surfaces

Much attention has been being given to the importance of product surfaces in the field of plastic parts, as industrial design has become one of the key elements of product success. These plastic parts incorporate rib-like geometries on the non-appearance surfaces of plastic in order to increase the stiffness of rigidity of the section, but they often cause appearance problems of the product’s surface overall by making a sink mark on that surface. The thickness, height and draft-angle of the rib are generally known as major parameters influencing the sink mark on the appearance surface. Therefore, designers of plastic parts must determine the variables of reinforcing ribs. The goal of this study is to find the optimum design variables in the mixing conditions of the thickness, the height and the draft angle of reinforcing ribs so that designers of plastic parts can easily determine the conditions of the reinforcing ribs as the part’s section thickness varies within an objective limit in polycarbonate plastic resin and a high glossy surface that are widely applied in the creation of plastic products. We investigated the actual depths of sink marks on the surface of a specimen that was manufactured with an injection mold specifically for this study. Response surface methodology with the Box-Behnken design was used to analyze the regression curve of real depths with combinations of the thickness, height and draft angle of the ribs. The result shows that the most influential factor to increase the shrinkage is the thickness of ribs and that the optimum value of the rib thickness is a range from multiple of 0.25 to 0.34 of the section thickness. Also, the rib height and rib draft angle are not major factors that can change the sink amount.