Press position:XY Plot result

The Press position:XY Plot result shows the position of the press, measured from the location when the mold-cavity has been fully closed, displayed on an XY plot of position versus process time.

It is generated from an Injection-compression molding, compression molding or microcellular core-back analysis in 3D mesh.

Using this result

The initial press position is the press open distance at the start of the analysis. The value is 0 when the press is fully closed. When the press position reaches 0, the press does not move any further forwards, but remains stationary until the end of the process.

Things to look for

The objective is to run an injection-compression molding or compression molding analysis that generates a press position result that is equal (or as close as possible) to 0 at the end of molding. When this value is 0, the thickness of the molded part will be the same as the specified design thickness.

If the press position result at the end of molding is not close enough to 0, you can adjust the input parameters, rerun the analysis, and re-examine the results.

The final molded part thickness will be the design thickness (as modeled in the study file) plus the final press position result.

For example, suppose:

• 0.60 mm = Design thickness
• 0.02 mm = Final press position

The final molded part thickness would be 0.62 mm. The final molded part thickness is 3.3% larger than the design thickness. If this error is too great, you can try adjusting one or more of the following process settings and rerun:

• Reduce the Press open distance.
• Increase the Press speed so that the press can close earlier.
• Increase the Press compression force so that the material can be further compressed.
• Reduce Velocity/pressure switchover by %volume so that less material will be injected into the cavity.
• Increase the Fill time (to reduce the flow rate).