Abstract: Rather than developing full closure tonnage for a substantial portion of the duration of an injection cycle, closed loop control of the clamp pressure (such as through control of hydraulic pistons) permits clamp pressure to balance exactly, but preferably slightly exceed, the instantaneous injection pressure. A first approach mimics the injection pressure profile with time, whereby applied tonnage is varied with time according to sensed pressure measurements. A second approach looks to pre-stored or historically accumulated injection pressure information and, instead of varying the tonnage, applies a constant tonnage reflecting the maximum recorded or most likely injection pressure to be experienced in the mold (as recorded stored in a look-up table associated with the particular mold configuration). A machine controller (80, 82) causes the application of applied tonnage through the platen (16, 17) and tie-bars (19, 20) of an injection molding machine (10).

Abstract: An intelligent molding system (FIG. 2) is provided that makes use of data directly associated with a molding environment or particular mold (50, 52). Accessible data, typically stored locally in an in-mold memory device (76, 78) or input via an HMI (86), identifies parameters germane to mold set-up and machine operation. Upon receiving such data, a machine controller (80) operates to configure a molding machine (10) to an initial set-up defined by the data considered close to an optimal operating condition for the mold. Mold set-up data can include information relating to a fill profile for a molded article that is partitioned into different zones having different thicknesses and geometries. Weighting factors for the various zones compensate for differing cooling and flow characteristics. The memory (76, 78) can also be used to store historical data pertaining to mold operation, settings and alarms.