During the plastic injection molding production process, cooling is essential to solidify the plastic before the final product can be removed from the mold. Consequently, the design of the mold's cooling system is a critical factor. The primary purpose of the cooling system design is to place the cooling channels as close to the product's surface as possible. This helps to minimize temperature differences across the mold, preventing warping or deformation of the final product due to inconsistent cooling and shrinkage.

Common cooling system designs include "straight-through," "fountain," and "circular" types. In recent years, with the maturation of metal 3D printing technology, "conformal cooling" has been increasingly recognized and applied. Conformal cooling systems can better conform to any location on the product compared to traditional cooling systems, resulting in increased cooling efficiency.

This case involves the design of a mold with conformal cooling. Before the mold is manufactured, fluid simulations are performed using CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) to analyze, investigate, and improve the design. Once the desired design trends are identified, the mold is manufactured and validated. The entire development process progresses within predictable trends, significantly reducing the labor costs associated with the "try and error" approach and reducing the development timeline by approximately 35%.

With the advent of Industry 4.0, the need for continually shortening development times and reducing costs has become increasingly important. It can be confidently stated that CAE simulation analysis has become an indispensable requirement in modern design and manufacturing.