Robot Arm for Plastic Injection Molding

Injection molding robots can produce parts by injecting different types of materials into a mold. They are designed for various processing methods such as finishing and assembling injection molding parts and loading components into injection molding machines. Aside from that, it can also perform a secondary process like in-mold labeling and decorating. These injection molding robots are more frequent in many industries due to their degree of flexibility and their long reach vertically and horizontally.

Injection molding robotics has several advantages. It offers the following:

• High information accuracy
• High safety
• Increase precision
• Lower operating cost
• High productivity
• High quality
• High turnaround
• Consistency in part of quality
• Increase efficiency
• Increase machined utilizations and more consistent cycles time
• Creating quicker molding processes and many more.

Injection molding robots are prevalent in various industries, particularly in electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial. It can provide several opportunities for industrial application in both downstream and upstream operations. There are some possibilities for robotics including:

• Part handling automations
• Insert and part-loading automation
• Over molding automation
• In-mold decorating applications
• Custom end-of-arm tooling

In the production process it is necessary to do a step-by-step processing method:

• Injection molding robots convey thermoplastic material in a hopper of injection molding machines.
• After that, the hopers move resin in the heating barrel wherein the plastic is melted
• If the plastic is melted the screws push the materials into a mold while applying pressure until the plastic cool.
• Then the mold is opened and the robots remove the plastic parts and then place them into conveyors. This is a repeated process again and again.

Traditional injection molding is a process where the plastic resin is conveyed into injection molding machines and gradually melted. In the time that plastic becomes liquid it is pushed through a nozzle into a mold and applied with appropriate pressure until the cooling time elapses. After that, the mold is opened and then the operator removes the part and places it into the conveyors.

While automated injection molding the repetitive process is granted by robots, then leaving the operators to focus on completing tasks and inspections. In this process, production can be done faster and at a reduced cost.

There are common uses of the automated injection molding process including:

• Quality control and vision inspections. Automated and robotics make it possible for humans to oversee inspection processes. The robots can be used for orienting different parts. It is also integrated with sensors to detect dimensional and other errors.
• Loading and unloading. The manual process of unloading and loading in the plastic injection molding will take up a lot of space. Using a robot is ideal for creating an efficient working environment so users can still operate in a constrained area.
• Sorting, stacking, and assembly. After the molding stage, robotic systems are capable of completing different tasks such as welding, sorting, building assemblies, packaging processes, etc.
• Secondary processes. Injection molding robots can perform different secondary processes such as labeling and decorating.