Research On The Ratio Of ABS/PMMA Blends And Optimization Of Experimental Injection Molding Process Parameters

ABS and its alloys have been widely used in various fields, such as building, transportation, medical and health, aerospace, information, home electric appliances. With the advancement of technology and improvement of living standards, single material has been difficult to meet consumer's growing demands to products. Especially the 3C(communication/computer/consumer) products, both excellent internal and appearance quality are required. In order to improve market competitiveness and to further broaden the application fields, development of ABS alloys with internal and appearance qualities is imperative.This paper introduced the international advanced technology called RHCM. It used a dynamic control mode of mold temperature to rapidly achieve 4 stages of temperature change in a short time such as heating of mold temperature, high temperature to maintain, cooling and low temperature to maintain which differed from the traditional injection molding process. This technology not only greatly improved the products' appearance quality to avoid post-treatment processes such as spraying, but also reduced production costs and improved production efficiency. In order to better develop RHCM technology, special high-gloss plastic for RHCM was needed. It was very important to modify ABS resin and develop ABS/PMMA blends with high gloss applicable to RHCM technology.Based on the testing standards of ABS/PMMA blends' performance, the corresponding model of splines was set up. The software named MPI was used to optimize the conventional injection molding process parameters combined with technical parameters of injection molding equipment exiting and orthogonal experimental design. The best combination of injection molding process parameters was determined by analysis of flow and warpage with the influencing factors as injection time, packing time, packing pressure, cooling time, mold temperature and melt temperature.According to the model of MPI and the injection molding equipment exiting, matched mold was designed and manufactured. Without any additives, commercial resins of ABS and PMMA were selected to prepare ABS/PMMA blends in different ratios by melt blending in the experiment. The brand of ABS is CH510 produced by Panjin Ethylene Industry Corporation, while PMMA's brand is CM207 produced by Chi Mei Industrial Co., Ltd. of Taiwan. The ABS/PMMA blends were injected into tension splines standard, thermal deformation splines standard and impact splines standard with the best injection molding process parameters. The best ratio of ABS/PMMA blends was 90 to 10, obtained through the studies both on the splines' performance of tensile property, impact strength, surface hardness and surface gloss and on blend particles' melt index in different ratios. The ABS/PMMA blends in this ratio improved the glossiness of ABS, while ensuring the other performance.The result of this research has important significance on modification of ABS, and will be a foundation for further research on the formulation of high-gloss ABS/PMMA blends as well.