COST AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION MODELS FOR COMPARING MULTI-SHOT AND TRADITIONAL INJECTION MOLDING

Abstract

Multi-shot molding is rapidly becoming a viable manufacturing process alternative to traditional injection molding with assembly operations due to potential benefits in both cost and quality of the end products. With these new manufacturing processes comes a need to develop new tools for analyzing products at the conceptual design level in order to choose the best manufacturing process. This thesis presents two complementary models for comparing multi-shot molding with traditional injection molding using cost and performance-based metrics. This work is mainly for comparative analysis of two manufacturing processes. The models were developed by expanding and combining existing academic work with current industry practices to provide a comprehensive framework for product comparison and process selection. The models were shown to provide results on two separate case studies. This research is a step towards automating the design and process-selection of injection molded components.