Minimization of Warpage in Plastic Injection-Molded Parts Based on the ‘Pick-the-Winner` Rule and Design Space Reduction Method

This paper presents a robust design procedure for minimizing warpage in plastic injection-molded products, where the Pick-the-Winner rule based on Taguchi`s Orthogonal Array experiments and the Design Space Reduction Method are integrated for optimization. Two-step optimization approach is applied to reduce warpage in the part design stage and additionally to minimize the warpage in the process conditions design stage. Taguchi`s S/N ratio is introduced as a design metric to evaluate robustness against process variations. The effectiveness of proposed optimization process is shown with an example of warpage minimization problem.