Plastic material at the specified melt temperature (see Process Settings) is introduced into the plastic part through injection locations. Each injection location is defined by a surface or a point. SurfaceFor surface-based injection locations, the plastic enters the part from the entire surface you select. If your model has a runner system, select the top of the sprue as your injection location. PointFor point-based injection locations, the plastic enters the part at a location that you specify. If your model does not have a surface that represents your injection location, specify any location on a surface as the center of a circular area through which the plastic is injected. Note:
By not modeling the runner system, the effects on the plastic temperature and flow are
ignored.
Typically, the diameter of the injection location should be 60-80% of the part thickness. Automatic Creation of Injection LocationsIf you created your part geometry and injection locations using Functional Plastic Parts, Plastic Injection creates those injection locations in the simulation automatically. You can delete these injection locations or add more of them, but these changes do not automatically propagate back to the Functional Plastic Parts app. If you create injection locations automatically using Plastic Injection, as opposed to inheriting them from Functional Plastic Parts, the app uses an algorithm to approximate the ideal injection locations. The algorithm works in the following manner:
The plastic part below, which is an unusual geometry, demonstrates the importance of using the center of gravity of the distribution of occupied elements when determining the injection locations automatically. The different colors represent regions of the part filled by different injection locations. |