Speaker
Description
Nowadays, molds and plastics companies are aware of markets increasing globalization, which leads to major competition in the industrial environment. This requires the best conditions of productive flexibility in order to overcome the challenges. An example is microfabrication, which was initially applied in integrated circuits production, up to several small-scale components today. Injection molding microfabrication allows production of parts/systems/devices or its features where the scale is sub-millimeter, based on polymeric materials, at high series and complex geometries in relatively short periods of time. However, this technology involves a rigorous control of the process in order to ensure the quality of injected microparts. Thus, it is essential that the injected material is properly distributed inside the µmold in order to minimize the occurrence of defects during the process. This is depending on the pressure process and mixture viscosity, which is directly related to the temperature during injection in mold. An ultra-fast response of temperature sensors, it is necessary. This oblige to have thin film thermocouples deposited on the critical zones of the mold (i.e. inserts). However, the µmold must be coated to accomplish two proposes: improve the lifetime of the mold and to contribute to the part/system/device extraction. Coating base on WS2 with the addition of C (W-S-C) is revealed to be the solution in what concerns high hardness and very low friction coefficient. However, the presence of C excludes the possibility to be the substrate to deposit the ultra-fast thermocouple (T-type). The present study shows that other type of WS2 (W-S-N) has a lower electrical conductivity than the other kind of WS2 coatings, maintaining the characteristics of mold surface coatings and is suitable to let an evaluation of temperature with precision and ultra-fast response.
| Speaker Country | Portugal |
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