Experimental design and investigation of a screwpin tooling system for vacuum forming components

This paper presented an experimental design and investigation of a screw-pin tooling (SPT) for producing vacuum forming components. The experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the machined SPT. Several thermoplastic materials with different sheet thickness were employed to test surface quality of the vacuum formed plastic components based on the machined SPT. From the experimental results, the performance of the machined SPT was discussed. A common problem faced by reconfigurable pin tooling is the dimples on the moulded components. To solve the problem, fillings is applied on the top of the machined screw pins. Several filler materials were selected and tested. The results prove that the machined SPT with the Ronseal high performance wood filler can produce good quality component surfaces.