Reduction of production lead time in metal injection molding (MIM) process

• Main Authors: Diao, Zongjie, Josef, Velda, Wong, Fook Heng
• Other Authors: Lam Yee Cheong
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Manufacturing
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60666
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With miniaturization, products designed for commercial, domestic and military purposes are progressively smaller, lighter and more compact. MIM process has the advantage of low cost, high performance and shape complexity, This project adopts a holistic approach in developing a series of lead time reduction improvements at the systems level (job shop scheduler) and process level (debinding process). On the systems level, the scheduling of time critical resources like debinding ovens and sintering furnaces are improved by an automated scheduler developed. The scheduler employs a hybrid of heuristics, greedy search and intelligent genetic programming techniques to continually approach the global optimal solution. On the process level, an investigation on the thermal debinding oven characteristics is done to provide a base for further process lead time improvements. The identification involves modelling both analytically and numerically, based on the experimental data. It was found that the lag between the control temperature and the actual temperature of the part is mainly due to the heat resistance and capacitance of the part and secondly due to the inert gas flow rate used during debinding process.