Valve gate systems are used to control various aspects of the part production, including how the cavity fills, part weight, cavity pressure, overpacking, weld lines, flashing and drooling.
With this release, valve gate control has been extended to multiple barrel thermoplastics injection molding. In multiple barrel thermoplastics injection molding simulations, valve gate controllers are set up the same way as for conventional thermoplastics injection molding simulations. Create valve gate controllers, and assign them to appropriate hot gates. By default the valve gate is associated with the gate node to which it is attached, and by extension to the associated barrel. For flow front and pressure, you can change the trigger location to a specific node.
Valve gate control is by:
- Pressure - by default this is the pressure at the hot gate node. You can change this to a different node
- Flow front - by default this is the flow front at the hot gate node. You can change this to a different node
- Time - this refers to the time from the start of injection
- % Volume - this refers to the % volume of filled nodes
- Ram position - for multiple barrel thermoplastics injection molding, this refers to the ram position of the barrel associated with the hot gate to which the valve gate controller is attached. Though a valve gate is associated with its upstream barrel automatically by the software, make sure the ram position triggers are within the moving range of the ram speed profile set for the barrel, otherwise the valve gate may not open and/or close as expected.
In the example below, there is a master barrel with three injection locations, and a sub-barrel with two injection locations. There are three valve gates; two on hot gates associated with the master barrel, and one on a hot gate associated with the sub barrel.
The valve gate instructions are reflected in the analysis log, so you can correlate the valve gate setup with the results of the simulation.
