Product Quality Prediction for Kneading Process in Ceramic Injection Molding

The injection molding of ceramics consists of four elementary processes. This paper focuses on the first process, the kneading process of mixing ceramics and organic materials. In this study, current-time curves obtained by a kneader are analyzed from the viewpoint of variance and mean, and it is demonstrated that the quality of sintered products is predictable through these analyses. The method of parameter design of quality engineering is adopted. The variation of sintered products produced after optimizing the molding process on the basis of kneader current measurements, and that of sintered products produced after optimization based on dimension data agree well. These results indicate that prediction of the variability of sintered products at the kneading stage is possible.