LCC and LCA Simplified Models to Foster the Design of Sustainable Plastic Injection Moulds

Inês Esteves; César Augusto Paulo; Raquel Maria Raimundo; Paulo Miguel Nogueira Peças; Elsa Maria Pires

Key information

Authors:

Inês Esteves (Inês Esteves Ribeiro); César Augusto Paulo (César Augusto Paulo Pousa); Raquel Maria Raimundo (Raquel Maria Raimundo Folgado); Paulo Miguel Nogueira Peças (Paulo Miguel Nogueira Peças); Elsa Maria Pires (Elsa Maria Pires Henriques)

Published in

May 2009

Abstract

Plastic injection moulds are usually designed by the mould maker company that will afterwards produce it. Aiming to design a sustainable and competitive mould means to select the most appropriated materials, mould type, mould manufacturing technologies and mould components. Additionally, the mould behaviour in the injection moulding phase must also be included in the analysis scope of the mould life cycle. The LCC and the LCA methods are the proper methods to assist the mould designer in the materials/technologies/features selection process. However, the mould making companies are mostly SMEs with no available time and/or knowledge to build up and interpret such time and resources consuming analysis. Despite this limitation it can be found in the mould making companies some characteristics that represent a hope towards the implementation of life cycle approaches in the mould design phase. They have technological skills, which give to the design team a deep insight along the manufacturing chain in a early design phase. As well, the materials and the manufacturing technologies used in different moulds are highly similar. These two characteristics are the key factors for the research developed. In this paper the full LCC and LCA models required to perform a complete life cycle analysis of an injection mould are described. Several simplifications of the models are proposed based on common practices in mould making industry. The resulting simplified models are applied on a case study, comparing different mould design alternatives.