Development of a production chain for the local mould production.

Abstract

This project is about development of a production chain for the local mould production with a construction helmet as the case study. As the rate of use and production of plastics in Uganda is exponentially increasing yet there is no written literature about any mould makers in the country but only depending on imports, There is need to venture into a local mould production to reduce on the costs especially on imports and also reduce on the countries reliance on other countries for moulds. The project is centered on the use of CAD/CAM techniques to design, simulate and analyze required geometries, filling processes of the mould and investigate conditions in the mould for various plastic types to optimize the design of the mould. It is tailored to synchronize with the current economic status of the Ugandan manufacturers; in order to enhance adoption of the local mould production in the country. The reason is because imported moulds are extraordinarily expensive for most Ugandan lower and middle class manufacturers. Much of the work revolved around the use of engineering knowledge to select system parameters for the mould and material selection. All these were based on a design for manufacturing approach after carrying out a sample customer survey. The results showed that plastic moulds can actually be produced locally. The helmet mould produced can successfully be used on a machine with atleast clamping force of 150 tones and inlet pressure limit of atleast 100 Mpa.