Conformal vs Conventional Cooling

Injection molds are wonderful things. You can create nearly any object using an injection mold, but knowing the difference between different cooling options will make all the difference.

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Using injection molds to manufacture objects is a technology well-known across the world. Injection molds use cooling channels to allow molded objects to cool quickly, leading to faster turnaround times as more objects are quickly molded.

Know Your Cool

There are two types of cooling channels that are incorporated into injection molding: conventional and conformal.

Conventional

Conventional cooling, also known as standard cooling, consists of straight line cooling channels that are generally located in the center of the object, regardless of the object’s shape.

Conformal

Conformal cooling channels follow the shape of the interior of an injection-mold object.

Conformal is the obvious choice for most injection molds. Compared with conventional cooling channels, conformal cooling allows for greater heat transfer due to the cooling channels filling out more of the interior of the object. On the other hand, conventional cooling only cools outward from the inner center of the object, taking away less heat.

Save Time, Save Money

So why is this important? Because time is money. When your injection molded products need to cool, it takes a lot of time to come down from the high temperatures achieved during the injection process. The longer it takes to cool down, the longer it will be before you can get another mold made.

Several companies around the world have striven to perfect conformal cooling technology in their manufacturing processes, but none have been successful as The LEGO Group. In 2010, a study was completed by the toy company to see if conformal cooling was as effective as other methods when using injection molds to create LEGO brick elements. The survey revealed that conformal cooling was the method of choice. While its cooling effectiveness was matched by bronze inserts, conformal cooling proved to allow for higher quality bricks to be produced.

Complete Control

Maintaining control over temperatures is critical in any manufacturing environment. Trust North Slope Chillers to meet your cooling needs. For more information, call (866) 826-2993 or email [email protected].