A novel setup for cavity pressure and temperature measurements in micro-injection moulding

In injection moulding, continuous monitoring of temperature and pressure parameters in the mould cavity is very important for process control and optimization. In the micro injection moulding process, however, it is more difficult to measure the cavity pressure and temperature due to the extremely small sizes involved. In this paper, a novel setup for cavity pressure and temperature measurements is presented: a miniaturized p,T quartz sensor is used to measure both pressure and temperature directly in the middle of the mould cavity and a data acquisition system has been developed in order to collect signals provided by the sensors. It was demonstrated the suitability of the novel setup to micro injection moulding and that it can be easily applied to any micro injection moulding machine.