Tecnología de fabricación de moldes para optimizar el proceso de moldeo por soplado de envases PET, en una planta embotelladora de bebidas

Abstract

Currently, the best designed and manufactured molds are not made in Ecuador, they come from foreign companies, increasing the cost of imports and manufacturing times of prototype molds for testing, factors that affect the efficiency of packaging production; therefore, the objective of this research project is to design the mold manufacturing technology and simulate the blow molding process of PET containers, which will be validated according to the specifications required by the beverage bottling plant in order to optimize times, manufacturing costs and process parameters. Mold manufacturing technology was designed through computer-aided design and manufacturing and engineering software (CAD/CAM/CAE) and the machining parameters and materials available in the country were established for the manufacture of each of the parts that make up a blow mold. With the development of the simulation of the blow molding process using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, the mechanical and thermal properties of the mold were evaluated and the thickness for the containers was determined, thus, the transfer temperatures were analyzed heat in the mold during the molding process according to process parameters of the bottling plant. Finally, a technological report was implemented to optimize the blow molding process, which describes the appropriate parameters to eliminate defects in the containers, which are a pressure of 32 bars, a temperature of 95 degrees centigrade, cycle time blowing speed of 2.5 seconds at a speed of 7.31 meters per second and a heat transfer coefficient of 6569.3 Watts, whose data is associated with the simulation run.