Abstract: An experimental device is developed for studying mold-temperature-control solidification (MTCS) process. The device includes the mold and temperature measure & control system. In the mold, eight groups of individual heating and cooling units are distributed in proportional spacing. The mold is heated by 16 far-infrared heating pipes and mold cooling are processed by forced convection of the coolant in the machined channels. Eight thermocouples are used to measure the transient temperature of the melt on different positions. According to the temperature data obtained by data collection module, the output control module signals to open or close the heating and cooling units. Thus the mold temperature can be automatically controlled. The flow control is implemented by developing the application based on the MCGS configuration software. The MCGS application can show the real-time and history graphs of the control points temperature and control the system by warning and cyclic strategies. The results of numerical simulation and experiment indicate that the product has no defects like shrinkage cavities and the relative errors between the numerical and experimental data are less than 8 percent.

Key words: Forming device, Individual temperature control units, Mold-temperature-control solidification(MTCS)