Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2018, Vol. 10(10) 1–13
Ó The Author(s) 2018
The feasibility of external gas-assisted DOI: 10.1177/1687814018806102
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
mold-temperature control for thin-wall
injection molding

Pham Son Minh , Thanh Trung Do and Tran Minh The Uyen

Abstract
Simulation and experimental testing were conducted on an external gas-assisted mold-temperature control combined
with a pulsed cooling system used for thin-wall injection molding to determine its effect on the heating rate and tem-
perature distribution of a mold surface. For mold heating via external gas-assisted mold-temperature control, a hot gas
was directly discharged on the cavity surface. Based on the heat convection between the hot gas and the cavity surface,
the cavity temperature rose to the target value. Practically, the gap between the heating surface and the gas gate is an
important parameter as it strongly influences the heating process. Therefore, this parameter was analyzed under differ-
ent values of plate-insert thickness herein. Heating was elucidated by the temperature distribution and heating-rate data
detected by the infrared camera and sensors. Then, external gas-assisted mold-temperature control was applied for the
thin-wall injection-molding part of 0.5 mm thickness with the local-gate-temperature control. The results show that with
300°C gas temperature, the heating rate could reach 9°C/s with a 0.5-mm stamp thickness and a 4-mm gas gap. The
results show that with local heating at the melt-entrance area of the mold plate, the cavity was filled with a 20-s heating
cycle.

Keywords
Injection molding, mold heating, dynamic mold-temperature control, external gas-assisted mold-temperature control,
thin-wall product, melt flow length

Date received: 7 July 2018; accepted: 13 September 2018

Handling Editor: Shun-Peng Zhu

Introduction same token, a lower mold surface temperature reduces

Thin-wall and micro-injection molding is used to man-
ufacture a variety of polymer components because of
its low cost and high-volume production. Many of the
components are used in micro-optic and micro-fluidic
applications, such as optical gratings, optical switches,
waveguides, pumps, capillary analysis systems, and lab-
on-a-chip applications.1–5 To improve the quality of an
injection molded plastic part requires both high mold
temperature and reduced injection pressure. Mold-tem-
perature control is thus a key parameter in the injection
molding process. It is known that a high mold surface
temperature results in a better quality plastic part but
leads to longer cooling time and cycle time. By the
cooling time but lowers the surface quality of the
part.6–9 A challenge for current researchers is to figure
out how to increase the mold surface temperature while
maintaining a reasonable cycle time, specifically, how
to maintain high mold temperature as the mold is being
filled with molten plastic while lowering the mold
HCMC University of Technology and Education, Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Corresponding author:
Pham Son Minh, HCMC University of Technology and Education, No 1
Vo Van Ngan Street, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Email: minhps@hcmute.edu.vn

Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without
further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/
open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
temperature to below the deflection temperature after
filling without significantly increasing cycle time or
energy consumption. To solve this problem, researchers
have recently explored a variety of dynamic mold-
temperature controls (DMTCs) whose function is to
eliminate the frozen layer that forms when molten plas-
tic contacts a cool surface, such as a molding part, by
providing a hot mold plate during the filling stage and
is cooled quickly in the cooling stage of injection mold-
ing process.8 For the heating step in injection molding,
two types of solutions exist, including the volume-
heating and the surface-heating methods. For volume
heating, the entire mold plate is heated. By contrast,
the surface-heating method impacts only the cavity sur-
face. With the volume-heating method, the most inex-
pensive way to achieve a high mold temperature is to
use water heated at temperatures as high as 90°–
100°C.9–11 In the case where mold temperature must
be .100°C, steam heating could be applied to the mold
plate.12–14 Although these methods are efficient in
molding and improve the quality of the molded part,
the channel and connector may be damaged when
operating at high pressure, and energy costs are also an
issue. Other heating methods include the use of an elec-
tric heater for local heating of the mold.15,16 These
methods could raise the mold temperature to 150°C
and help increase the length of the melt flow, especially
with respect to micro-injection molding.17 However,
the electrical method often requires additional design
and tool costs, and it also requires an auxiliary form of
heating. In general, with volume-heating methods, the
mold temperature could be increased to improve the
quality of the molded part. However, the heating rate,
energy costs, and system safety still require further con-
sideration and optimization. To reduce these disadvan-
tages, a thin heater has been adopted to control the
temperature of cavity surfaces during the injection
molding process. This method supports fast cooling
even when kept active for very long period of time.
Experimentally, the heater was set at 150°C for a long
heating time, which resulted in a significant effect on
the samples frozen in orientation that were observed
via optical microscopy and confirmed through X-ray
analysis. This method could be applied for micro-
injection molding with a proper-sized sheet heater.18
In recent years, many researchers proposed heating
just the mold surface rather than the entire mold plate
volume by increasing the mold surface temperature
through methods such as induction heating,19–22 high-
frequency proximity heating,23,24 and gas-assisted
mold-temperature control (GMTC).25–27 With the
induction-heating method, a high-frequency current is
created in an external coil, and the induced current
appears on the mold surface; this induced current heats
the mold surface. This method can support a high heat-
ing rate, and it also enables the calculation of
temperature distribution. In high-frequency proximity
heating, when two metallic mold plates face each other
with a small gap and carry high-frequency electric cur-
rent flowing in opposite directions, the current tends to
flow along the two inner surfaces facing each other,
resulting in a stronger magnetic field forming between
the gaps of the two plates. The two mold plates are
heated by the proximity-heating effect. However, these
two heating methods are applied only to steel molds
with high permeability and can easily overheat the
mold plate with their rapid heating time; this can cause
forming problems, especially along the edges of the
molded part.
Compared to the induction-heating and proximity-
heating methods, the heating rate for gas heating is not
as high, although gas heating can be used for most
mold materials, and it will not overheat the mold due to
the heat convection that characterizes the heat transfer
between the hot gas and mold surface. In our previous
research, an internal gas heating system was installed in
the mold structure to make it more heat efficient by reg-
ulating heating rate and temperature distribution.25,27
Although testing of the system showed positive results,
there were a couple of issues: (1) adding a gas heating
system to the mold design proved to be very difficult to
achieve; (2) loss of thermal energy from the heat trans-
fer was still too high.
Consequently, in this study, we tested the feasibility
of an external gas-assisted mold-temperature control
(Ex-GMTC) combined with a pulsed cooling system in
heating the mold surface by varying the thickness of the
mold plate insert and by varying the gas gap between
the gas gate and heating surface to determine its effect
at different heating temperatures on the heating rate
and temperature distribution of the mold surface for
thin-wall injection molding. In addition, we looked at
how the Ex-GMTC may improve melt flow length in
the injection molding of a front cover plate article.
Simulation and experimental method
Ex-GMTC is a new technique in the field of mold-
temperature control, which can heat and cool the mold
surface rapidly during injection molding. In general,
the goal of mold-temperature control is to increase the
temperature of the mold surface to the target tempera-
ture before filling the mold with plastic melt and then
cooling the melt to the ejection temperature. In this
research, the Ex-GMTC system consisted of a pulsed
cooling system, hot-gas generator system (including an
air compressor, air drier, digital volumetric flow con-
troller, and high-efficiency gas heater), and water mold-
temperature controller as shown in Figure 1.
The high-power, hot-gas generator system func-
tioned to support the heat source, which provided a
Minh et al.
Figure 1. Ex-GMTC system.
Figure 2. Mold position during the heating stage of injection molding process.
flow of hot air up to 300°C with an inlet gas pressure of
up to 7 MPa. The hot air was thus the heating source
for increasing the mold surface temperature.28 For the
coolant system, a mold-temperature controller was used
to control the water temperature for cooling the mold
after the filling process and for warming the mold to
the initial temperature before the beginning of the next
cycle. The pulsed cooling system was used to control
the water flowing in cooling channels and to control air
for the heating stage. When the water flows inside the
cooling channel, it cools the mold plate; therefore, for
improving the heating efficiency, in the heating step, the
water was stopped for reducing the external loss of
energy. To both regulate and track the temperature at
the cavity surface, five temperature sensors from Extech
Instruments—TP875—were used to obtain real-time
mold-temperature data and to provide feedback to the
Ex-GMTC controller.
This mold surface-heating method for injection
molding is as follows (Figure 2). Step 1: two mold
plates are moved to the opening position. Step 2: the
3
hot-gas drier is moved to the heating position and air is
heated as it flows through the gas drier and is directed
to the cavity surface. Upon contact with the hot gas,
the cavity surface is heated to the target temperature.
Step 3: once the cavity surface reaches the target tem-
perature, the mold is completely closed in preparation
for filling.
Figure 3 shows the position of the Ex-GMTC and
the mold plate on the injection molding. The gas drier
with the dimensions of 240 mm 3 100 mm 3 40 mm
is shown in Figure 4. A gas channel, 5 mm in width and
10 mm in depth, was cut inside the gas drier. The heat-
ing area of the mold cavity was inserted with a stamp
with dimensions of 100 mm 3 50 mm. The location of
the mold, stamp inserts, and sensors are shown in
Figure 5. In both simulation and experimental testing,
the position of all components of the injection molding
system during the heating stage was the same as shown
in Figure 6. To measure the heating effect of the Ex-
GMTC on stamp temperature, five temperature sensors
were used, one located at the center of the injection
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 3. Experimental model for Ex-GMTC.
molding system near the outlet of gas drier and the
other sensors located at the top and bottom side of the
cavity plate.
A simulation model of the stamp was built to study
the temperature distribution of the heating area. In
accordance with other research,26,27 the simulation
model included a stamp volume and air volume. The air
volume accounted for the small air gap between the
stamp insert and the mold, which acted as an insulation
layer. A meshing model of the stamp is shown in Figure
7, boundary conditions are shown in Figure 8, and the
properties of air and stamp are listed in Table 1. The
simulated stamp was a hex-dominant mesh with seven
layers of thickness, and the air volume was a tetrahedral
mesh with the smaller element size which will be set up
at the hot-gas inlet location. Simulation of the heating
Figure 4. Hot-gas generator component parts.
process using ANSYS involved the same experimental
parameters.
The experiment involved thin-wall injection molding
(SW-120B molding machine from Shine Well
Machinery Co., Ltd) of a polypropylence (PP) Moplen
EP3OOL (from LyondellBasell) material into a front
cover plate article as shown in Figure 9. During the
common injection molding process, this product is vul-
nerable to short shot trouble when the injection pres-
sure is low; however, with very high injection pressure,
the flash trouble is frequently encountered.7 Therefore,
with the ability of mold-temperature control, the Ex-
GMTC will be applied for such molding processes to
achieve improvements in product quality when the
injection molding process will be operated with the
middle injection pressure. Molding parameters were
maintained for all testing cases (Table 2). With each
case of gas temperature, the molding cycle was oper-
ated with 20 cycle products to achieve the stability of
all systems; subsequently, products of the next 10 cycles
were collected for comparing the melt flow length.
Results and discussions
Effect of stamp thickness on the heating process
In other studies,25–28 with the mold surface-heating
method, the structure of the stamp insert is often con-
trolled for increasing the heating efficiency. Based on
the results of these studies, the stamp thickness proved
to be one of the most important parameters in mold
design. Therefore, in this article, for estimating the
heating ability of Ex-GMTC, a stamp with the size of
100 3 50 mm2 was inserted into the cavity, and the
heating process was achieved with a hot-gas tempera-
ture of 300°C and the gap between the gas gate and the
heating surface was 7 mm. The variation in the mold
temperature (at sensor S3 –Figure 5) versus time for a
heating time of 20 s is depicted in Figure 10. At the ini-
tial mold temperature of 30°C, the Ex-GMTC was
shown to heat the plate to above 190°C, higher than
Minh et al. 5

10.0
25.0
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 15.0
`
5.0 22.5 22.5 22.5 22.5 5.0
X X
25.0

130.0

Stamp insert 7.0

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5
`
30.0

X-X Cooling channel Unit: mm

Figure 5. Cavity dimensions with sensor locations S1 to S5.

G: the gap between gas gate and heating

surface
t : stamp thickness
30.0
Figure 7. Meshing model.

S1

Hot Gas
S2 gate
G
S3

S4
t
Heating surface
Cooling
S5
`

channel

X-X Unit: mm

Figure 6. Heating position of Ex-GMTC.

Figure 8. Boundary condition of the simulated model.

the glass transition temperature of common plastics,
and could reach a maximum heating rate of 8.3°C/s.
Hence, for raising the mold surface temperature, the
Ex-GMTC showed high heating efficiency.
Stamp thicknesses of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mm
showed a heating rate of 8.3, 8.0, 7.1, and 6.4°C/s,
respectively. A decrease in heating rate corresponded
with an increase in stamp thickness, that is to say, an
increase in stamp volume. Therefore, the thicker the
stamp, the more thermal energy is needed to raise the
stamp temperature. In this research, to evaluate the
uniformity of the heating process under various stamp
thicknesses, the temperatures at the five sensors, as
shown in Figure 5, were collected and compared
through simulation and experiment. Figure 11 shows
the simulation result about temperature distribution.
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 1. Material properties (for simulation).

Material Properties Unit Value

Air Molecular mass kg/kmol 28.96

Density kg/m3 1.185
Specific heat capacity J/kg
K 1004.4
Dynamic viscosity kg/ms 1.831e25
Thermal conductivity W/m
K 0.0261
Steel Molecular mass kg/kmol 55.85
Density kg/m3 7854
Specific heat capacity J/kg
K 434
Thermal conductivity W/m
K 60.5

Figure 9. Front cover part dimension.

Table 2. Molding parameters for an injection molded front

cover plate article.

Molding parameter Unit Value

Figure 10. Mold temperature (taken at S3) as a function of
Injection speed cm3/s 52.4
Injection pressure Bar 50 time for varying plate thicknesses.
Injection time s 0.7
Packing time s 2 center with the induction-heating method.19–22 The
Packing pressure Bar 35
results additionally show that when the stamp increased
Cooling time s 15
Mold temperature °C 40 in thickness from 0.5 to 2.0 mm, the maximum tem-
Melt temperature °C 230 perature decreased from 196°C to 158°C. The differ-
Pre-heating time by Ex-GMTC s 20 ence temperature between the sensor locations are
70°C, 72°C, 52°C, and 45°C with the stamp thickness
Ex-GMTC: external gas-assisted mold-temperature control.
of 0.5, 1.0, 1,5, and 2.0 mm, respectively. This difference
is attributed to the difference in heat transfer of the
The temperature at the end of heating step collected plates. With a thinner plate, thermal energy is concen-
and compared as in Figure 12. The results show that trated in the center region; however, with a thicker
the highest temperature is located at the center of the stamp, heat transfers to the lower temperature region.
stamp, which is closest to the hot-gas gate, while the Moreover, it requires more thermal energy to raise the
lowest temperatures are located on either ends of the temperature of a thicker stamp at the center region
stamp. This distribution profile is more desirable than than a thinner stamp. These results also prove that with
the temperature distribution obtained by the internal the heating time of 20 s, for all type of stamp thickness,
GMTC, which shows non-uniform temperatures of the temperature of stamp varies from over 110°C to
cavity area.25,27 With the temperature distribution dis- about 200°C. Given that the minimum and maximum
cussed in this paper, the product will be cooled from temperature obtained within a heating time of 20 s were
the far to the closer of melt entrance; therefore, the hot 110°C and 200°C, respectively, Ex-GMTC is ideal for
melt will be flowed easily to the cavity, particularly in injection molding because it is within the glass transi-
the case of thin-wall injection molding. The Ex-GMTC tion temperature for most plastics and does not reach a
also eliminates the problem of low temperature at the temperature that would degrade the plastic.
Minh et al.
Figure 11. Temperature distribution of the stamp area with an initial temperature of 30°C, gas temperature of 300°C, inlet gas
pressure of 7 MPa, and heating time of 20 s.
Figure 12. Temperature on the center line determined via
experiment.
For verifying the accuracy of the simulation result, the
experiment was performed with the same boundary con-
ditions as those in the simulation. The experiment had
been performed 10 times for each case, and the average
value of the data will be subsequently represented for this
case. Temperature data from the sensors were collected
and compared with the simulation results as shown in
Figure 13. The difference between simulation and experi-
mental results was less than 10°C. This difference is due
to the delay in measurement of the sensor, especially with
this state, the thermal energy transfers quickly from the
high-temperature area to the lower temperature area.
Nonetheless, the overall results of the simulation and
experimental studies show good agreement.
Effect of gas gap between air gate and surface
heating on the heating process
In injection mold, for heating the core plate, the heat-
ing area is often convex; thus, the gas gate may often
7
be in proximity to this area. However, with the cavity
plate, the heating area is often concave and the depth
depends on the height of the plastic product; thus, in
many cases, the gas gate cannot approach the heating
area with a tall product. Therefore, in this case, the gap
between the heating surface and the gas gate is an
important parameter, which has a strong influence on
the heating process. Therefore, in this article, this para-
meter will be analyzed with the model as shown in
Figures 5 and 6 with a gas temperature of 300°C, a
stamp thickness of 0.5 mm, and a heating time of 20 s.
In the injection molding product, the common height is
often limited to 10 mm; therefore, the gas gap will be
varied with the values of 4, 7, and 10 mm.
Figure 14 shows heat diagrams of the temperature
distribution of the stamp at different gas gaps. Results
show that with a smaller gap, heat concentrates at the
center of the plate, resulting in a higher temperature at
the center region as well as larger temperature differ-
ences along the plate. In detail, based on the simulation
result, the temperature difference on the center line of
stamp is 81°C, 70°C, and 54°C. For a 0.5-mm stamp
thickness with a gap of 10 mm and at 20 s of heating,
the temperature distribution is somewhat more uniform
than the other two gap conditions. Figure 14 also shows
that with the larger heating area, the larger gas gap can
support the better temperature distribution. However,
with the narrower heating area, the smaller gas gap
could support the faster heating speed due to the con-
centration of the thermal energy. The comparison was
achieved between three types of gas gaps as shown in
Figure 15(a). For verifying the accuracy of simulation
result, the experiment had been done with the same gas
gap. Results of the simulation and experimental testing
show good agreement as shown in Figure 15(b)–(d).
With the gas gap of 10 mm, the difference is quite larger
than the other two cases due to the influence of environ-
ment in experiment. In the simulation, the boundary
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 13. Comparison of temperature on the center line with different stamp thickness by simulation and experiment.
Figure 14. Temperature distribution of the stamp at gas gap
sizes of 4.0, 7.0, and 10.0 mm, heating time of 20 s, and stamp
thickness of 0.5 mm.
condition does not include the air generated from other
sources in the workshop. However, in the practical
experiment, air generated from other sources affected
the flow of the hot gas, which reduced the concentra-
tion of the gas at the heating surface, resulting in
decreased heating efficiency. Therefore, the actual tem-
perature was lower than that obtained in the simula-
tion. In real molding processes, the gas gap should be
minimized as much as possible because the air produced
from other sources is difficult to predict, and the opera-
tor should reduce the air flow from other sources to the
heating area. Figure 16 shows a comparison of the tem-
perature distribution between the simulation and
experiment for the 10-mm gas gap case. This result indi-
cates that the high-temperature area also appeared at
the center of the stamp. However, in the experiment,
the high temperature tended to appear on the left side
of the stamp, which could be attributed to the asymme-
try of the gas gate on the gas dryer (Figure 4). Thus, in
the heating step, the thermal radiation of the gas dryer
potentially resulted in a higher heating temperature on
the left side of the stamp as compared to that on the
right side (about 8°C higher). In the future, this
Minh et al. 9

Figure 15. Plots of temperature taken at five sensor positions, with heating time of 20 s, and stamp thickness of 0.5 mm in (a)
simulation testing of three air gaps, (b) experimental and simulation testing with 4.0 mm air gap, (c) experimental and simulation
testing with 7.0 air gap, and (d) experimental and simulation testing with 10.0 air gap.

imbalanced distribution could be solved by properly

configuring and optimizing the gas dryer.

Improving the melt flow length of front cover part by

Figure 16. Temperature distribution of the stamp at gas gap
sizes of 10.0 mm, heating time of 20 s, and stamp thickness of
0.5 mm in (a) simulation and (b) experiment.
external gas heating for the gate-temperature control
For verifying the effectivity of Ex-GMTC on the injec-
tion molding cycle, the mold for the product of front
cover plate was used. The dimension of this product is
shown in Figure 9 with a thickness of 0.5 mm. The melt
material was polypropylence (PP) Moplen EP3OOL
from LyondellBasell. For the common injection mold-
ing cycle, the mold temperature should be set in the
range of 20°C–80°C. However, with thin-wall products,
as in this case, for full filling cavity, the mold tempera-
ture must be set as high as the system can manage. This
setup provides the hot melt flows easily due to the
10
Figure 17. Mold for front cover part with a gate heating area.
Figure 18. Temperature distribution of cavity plate after 20 s of heating at different hot-gas temperatures.
reduction in the freeze layer of melt flow.5,21 However,
when the mold temperature is high, wastage of energy
will occur as well as other troubles such as the warpage
and flashing. For alleviating these troubles, local mold-
temperature controlling was performed in this article.
Instead of maintaining all mold plates at high tempera-
tures, local mold-temperature controlling was applied
for the gate area by the local air pre-heating at the
beginning of the molding cycle. High temperature at
the gate area will reduce the pressure drop of the melt
flow when it passes the area. Figure 17 shows the cavity
Advances in Mechanical Engineering
plate, which includes the cavity area and the gate area.
The same with above structure, the gate area was rede-
signed with a steel insert for improving the heating effi-
ciency. This insert had the following dimensions: 20 3
15 3 10 mm3. For observing the influence of gas tem-
perature on the heating process, in this case, gases with
the temperatures of 150°C, 200°C, 250°C, and 300°C
were used with a heating time of 20 s. For verifying the
heating efficiency as well as the ability of local heating,
an infrared camera was used for detecting the tempera-
ture distribution after the heating step. Thereafter, the
Minh et al. 11

Figure 19. Melt flow length of front cover part after molding with Ex-GMTC at different hot-gas temperature.

Table 3. Experimental result of Ex-GMTC for local melt entrance.

Heating results Hot-gas temperature (°C)

Without heating 150 200 250 300

Gate temperature (°C) 40 95 110 125 140

Melt flow length (mm) 103 109.5 114.4 120 120
Length (%) 85.8 91.2 95.3 100 100

real molding cycle was achieved with parameters as

given in Table 2. Figure 18 shows the temperature dis-
tribution of the cavity plate at different gas tempera-
tures. Figure 19 shows the melt flow length of the
molded part at different gas temperatures. Results of
the gate temperature and melt flow length are shown in
Table 3. The result of temperature distribution shows
that the high temperature occurs only on the gate area,
which was heated by the hot gas in 20 s. It means that
the mold plate was maintained a low temperature in all
molding cycles that will help alleviating the part’s war-
page and flashing as well as the wastage of energy. In
the without heating condition, the melt length is
109.5 mm and the gate temperature is about 40°C. With
the Ex-GMTC, when the gas temperature increases
from 150°C to 300°C, the gate temperature varies
Figure 20. Melt flow length and gate temperature under
between 95°C and 140°C at a heating time of 20 s.
different gas temperature for Ex-GMTC.
Prior research reports that when mold temperature is
higher than the glass transition temperature, the melt
flows easily.21 Hence, in this study, when the gate tem-
perature was higher than 125°C, the cavity was com- for the front cover part was filled. In addition, these
pletely filled as shown in Figures 19 and 20. When the results demonstrated that the Ex-GMTC improved the
gas temperature reached higher than 250°C, the mold melt flow length from 85.8% to 100% filled for
12
injection molding of a thin-wall article when the mold
plate was held at the room temperature.
Conclusion
In this study, an Ex-GMTC combined with pulsed cool-
ing system was tested at different plate thicknesses and
gas gaps and at different temperatures to determine its
effect on heat rate and temperature distribution of the
mold surface. Key findings were as follows.
Stamp thickness clearly influenced heating rate and
temperature distribution: a thinner stamp had a faster
heating rate, while a thicker stamp had more uniform
temperature distribution.
Gas gap distance also influenced heating rate and
temperature distribution: with a smaller gap, heat was
concentrated in a focal area and at a faster heating rate,
while with a larger gap, heat was more spread out and
more uniform.
The use of the Ex-GMTC improved melt flow length
of thin-wall product. By using the infrared camera, the
temperature distribution at the cavity plate shows that
only the gate area was heated, and the other area was
maintained at the common temperature. A fully filled
cavity was obtained when the gas temperature was set
at 250°C at a heating time of 20 s.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Mr Tran Hong Phuc, Mr Nguyen
Phuoc Thien, and Mr Nguyen Hoai Phi for helping in the
experiment.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This research was funded by the Ministry of
Education and Training, Vietnam and HCMC University of
Technology and Education, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
ORCID iD
Pham Son Minh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8236-2202
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