Unit 45 - Additive Manufacturing Processes Assignment 1 - Distinction contains all the crucial information that is required in the assignment brief set out by BTEC. In the images, you can see the quality work put out which also highlights that I got a distinction grade for it.
During my research to identify certain products that require improvement or
drastic change I have come to a conclusion that American football Helmets
require a great change. Due to the fact that the initial process used to create the
helmets is injection moulding however it is not the most accurate process and
usually helmets that are created using injection moulding. They come in
common sizes such as S,M,L or based on age. To Improve this issue, I have
decided on a new process to use Laser powder bed fusion, as this process will
allow me to create a very specialized helmet based on the customers size of skull
and depth of skull ensuring that helmet will not fall off or budge while in use.
Injection Moulding for American Football Helmets:
Initially they used Injection Moulding to create American football Helmets and
then then covered it in leather to make it more comfortable
• Injection moulding works by first selecting the desired mould. Which is
made from stainless steel, than the bits/pellets of material most
commonly Thermoplastics are fed into the machine where it is heated,
when it reaches the desired temperature the machine threads/lead screw
rotate pushing the material inside. Where it gets pushed into the mould
where is compressed and by this it picks up the shape of the mould. Then
it is left to be cured for a few seconds and then it’s removed from the
mould a left to cool back down to room temperature by doing this you
make sure the plastic is rigid.
There are multiple materials which can be used for injection moulding such as
ABS, Polyethylene, nylon, acrylic and polystyrene.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Injection Moulding:
Advantages:
, • The advantage of using injection moulding is that it can be used for large
volume of production.
• The parts are highly accurate which makes the process faster because the
accuracy can be achieved by the machine that creates the components.
Surface finish can be altered as desired.
• There is a large variety of material choice for injection moulding.
• There is barely any material waste produced with injection moulding.
Disadvantages:
• One of the disadvantages of injection moulding is that the initial
machinery cost a lot(up to £80,000) and not many companies can afford
it which makes the market more competitive which decreases the profit
because each company is trying to create the cheapest products.
• The dyes/moulds used cost a lot of money(up to £12,000), each injection
moulding machine requires two mould for the two sides .
• The machine cleaning and preparation is a lengthy process which makes
it unsuitable for smaller scale of production or small scale part production.
Further Details about Injection Moulding:
• Injection moulded parts have a surface finish classification of A to B and a
tolerance of 0.09 mm which is very ideal for many applications. The
Injection Moulding Process can take up to 5 minutes depending of the size
of the mould and the part that is being made, because the larger the part
the longer it takes for it to cool down.
• There are limitations of how big of a part you injection mould can but this
mainly depends on the machine itself. A small injection moulding machine
can mould a part of maximum size of 4 inch by 4 inch.
• A medium one can mould parts up to 11 by 10 inches. However industrial
injection moulders can mould anywhere up to 30 by 30 inches, however
there are not many things that have this size so it is not very common to
use this sizes of dyes/moulds.
Hazards:
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