An apparatus for controlling the rate of flow of fluid mold material comprising: a manifold, a valve pin having a pin axis, a pin connector and a stem, the valve pin being drivable into and out of open and closed positions relative to the gate, an electric actuator comprising an electric motor comprised of a motor housing that houses a drive shaft having a drive gear and a drive axis, a transmission comprised of a transmission gear having a gear axis, the drive gear, the transmission gear and the valve pin being drivably interconnected and arranged such that the drive axis and the gear axis are non-coaxially mounted or disposed relative to each other and the valve pin is drivable linearly along the pin axis, wherein one or the other of the motor housing or the transmission housing are removably attached to a top clamping or mounting plate that is mounted upstream of the manifold and fixedly interconnected to a mold.

A toggle lever clamping unit for an injection moulding machine includes fixed and movable platens, a support plate, a toggle lever mechanism operatively connected with both the support plate and the movable platen, a cross clamp operatively connected with the toggle lever mechanism and movable along a machine longitudinal axis, and an electric drive for moving the cross clamp. In addition, a hydraulic drive is operatively connected with the cross clamp and includes a fluid-operated piston cylinder system, with the lengths of the cylinder and the piston rod being coordinated with one another such that the hydraulic drive follows a travel path of the cross clamp as the movable platen travels between an open position of the clamping unit, in which the toggle lever mechanism is swung in, and a closed position in which the toggle lever mechanism assumes a predeterminable extended position and a clamping force is built up.

An injection molding apparatus comprising a manifold, an actuator having a piston that divides an enclosed actuator housing into upstream and downstream actuator drive chambers, the piston having an internal piston chamber and a piston bore that communicates flow of the drive fluid between one of the upstream or downstream actuator drive chambers and the internal piston chamber, a flow rate controller adapted to enable flow of drive fluid between one of the upstream or downstream actuator drive chambers and a source of drive fluid at a first low rate of flow over a selected first portion of the stroke length of the piston and at a second high rate of flow over a selected second portion of the stroke length of the piston.

A controller of an injection molding machine controls mold clamping of a fixed mold and a movable mold. The controller includes a servomotor drive control unit for limiting increase in driving current during driving of a mold clamping servomotor, and a moving state acquisition unit that acquires a detection signal of an encoder. The controller further includes an abnormality determination processing unit for determining that a clamping force sensor is abnormal when recognizing stoppage of movement of the movable mold during mold clamping, based on the acquired detection signal of the encoder.

A power supply converter controller in an injection molding machine continuously operates a power supply converter in a continuous operation interval, operates the power supply converter in a step-up interval to increase a voltage of an electric storage unit up to a step-up voltage, and intermittently operates the power supply converter in an intermittent operation interval.

A method and apparatus for performing an injection molding cycle comprising drivably interconnecting a valve pin to an electric motor actuator and controllably operating the electric motor to drive the valve pin at one or more reduced rates of upstream or downstream travel based on either detection of the position of the pin or actuator or on a preselected length of time at which to drive the valve pin.

The present disclosure provides an injection molding apparatus and a method of fabricating a component. The apparatus may include a barrel comprising a first section having an end associated with a mold through a nozzle or a gate insert, a second section coupled to a hopper configured to fill a material into the barrel, and a temperature transition section between the first section and second section. The apparatus may include an extrusion screw placed inside the barrel and rotatable relative to the barrel. The apparatus may include one or more heaters associated with the first section of the barrel to heat the material inside the barrel. Rotation of the extrusion screw relative to the barrel may continuously extrude the material into the mold.

Apparatus and methods for storage and transmission of recipe data (process parameters) for the molding of articles in an injection molding apparatus. A controller includes a flow control microcontroller (MCU) that receives recipe data from a recipe storage microcontroller (MCU) mounted to a mold of an injection molding machine, the recipe storage MCU storing the recipe data defining process parameters for the molding of articles in the mold. The flow control MCU executes instructions for controlling valve pin motions according to the recipe data. In one embodiment, a human operator interface is provided for transmitting data to and/or from at least one of the recipe storage and flow control MCU's, allowing the operator to monitor, modify and/or control the process parameters during a molding cycle and/or to create a modified or new recipe for subsequent storage on the recipe storage MCU.

A mold clamping device of an injection molding machine supports a motor fixing member configured to fix a mold opening/closing motor to a rear platen, on a base frame through a support member and slide plates. When viewed from a direction of a drive shaft of the mold opening/closing motor, the width of the support member is formed to progressively increase outwardly from the motor fixing member toward the base frame, and on a portion of the support member that is located on the base frame side, the slide plates are provided at at least both ends of the portion in a width direction of the support member.

An apparatus for taking out a molded product that is capable of suppressing displacement vibration of an attachment in a shorter time than ever without using a large-scaled electric actuator. An active controller starts active control after the amplitude of displacement vibration of the take-out head as an attachment has been attenuated to a predetermined setting by means of positioning control by a servomotor or when the amplitude can be considered as having been attenuated to the predetermined setting. The positioning control is first performed by the servomotor, and then the active control is performed by the active controller using an electric actuator which is light in weight and small in size.