The use of plastics in today's world is still increasing despite its enormous burden for environmental sustainability. The urge to reduce plastics impact is driving the development of novel technological solutions. The high viscosity of thermoplastic polymer melts often leads to the design of oversized plastic parts having wall thickness higher than structural requirements. This work proposes a novel approach to wall thickness reduction, exploiting the thermally insulating effect of mold coatings. Four different mold coatings were characterized using inline rheological testing carried out on a PET using a slit-die open mold. The thermal boundary condition of a numerical model was calibrated by fitting the numerical to experimental pressure values. The thickness reduction associated with the use of a specific coating was then quantified for a case study geometry using the calibrated model. The results indicated that it is possible to reduce the thickness of the part by 12%, leading to material consumption and cycle time reduction of 8% and 22%, respectively.

尽管塑料对环境可持续性造成巨大负担，但在当今世界，塑料的使用仍在增加。减少塑料影响的冲动正在推动新型技术解决方案的发展。热塑性聚合物熔体的高粘度通常会导致设计出壁厚高于结构要求的超大型塑料零件。这项工作提出了一种新型的壁厚减小方法，该方法利用了模具涂料的隔热效果。使用在狭缝模头敞口模具上在PET上进行的在线流变测试，对四种不同的模具涂层进行了表征。通过将数值拟合到实验压力值来校准数值模型的热边界条件。然后，使用校准后的模型对案例研究中的几何形状量化与使用特定涂层相关的厚度减少量。结果表明，可以将零件的厚度减小12％，从而分别减少材料消耗和8％的循环时间。