Plastic Part Failure Analysis
Course description
Time: 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Location: 240 South Forge Street, Akron, Ohio 44325
Classroom 217 (Located inside the National Polymer Innovation Center)
Cost:
$900 USD
CEU's: 1.6
Instructor: Michael Sepe
Course Overview
This course covers elements of a successful plastic product; principles of plastic part design, mold design considerations, material selection, processing, failure analysis tools and failure analysis process.
Please note class times: First day of class - 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.; Second day of class - 8:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
- Elements of a successful plastic product
- Part design
- Mold design
- Material selection
- Processing
- Principles of plastic part design
- Nominal walls
- Ribs and other projections
- Holes and other depressions
- Designing for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA)
- Design properties versus inherent properties of materials
- Mold design considerations
- Mold steel selection
- Managing polymer flow in the mold - runners and gates
- Cavitation and the effect on balanced flow
- The economics of cavitation
- Hot runners versus conventional cold runners
- Mold temperature control
- Draft angles and ejection
- Material selection
- Defining the application environment - time, temperature, stresses, etc.
- Amorphous and semi-crystalline polymers
- The importance of molecular weight
- Structural choices within a polymer family
- Property modifiers and additives
- Regulatory considerations - UL, NSF, FDA
- Performance and processability
- Establishing the cost/performance balance
- Processing
- The fundamentals of polymer flow
- The effect of material structure on sound processing decisions
- Machine selection
- Process control strategies
- The quest for six sigma
- Failure analysis tools
- Material testing - composition and degradation
- Molecular weigh evaluations
- Thermal Analysis - DSC, TGA, DMA, TMA
- Spectroscopy - FTIR, EDS, XPS, SIMS
- Microscopy - cross sections and scanning electron microscopy
- Physical property evaluation - your part is not a tensile bar
- FEA and its relation to the application environment
- Advanced characterization of mechanical properties
- Material testing - composition and degradation
- The failure analysis process
- Gathering background information
- Focusing on the four fundamentals of a successful product
- Conducting the appropriate evaluations
- Establishing root cause
- Fixing what is broken
- Understanding the interactions of multiple causes
- The role of designs of experiment
- The cost/benefit analysis of problem solving
- Following up
- Case studies
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