Modeling and Characterization to Minimize Effects of Melt Flow Fronts on Premolded Component Deformation during In-Mold Assembly of Mesoscale Revolute Joints

In-mold assembly can be used to create mesoscale articulating polymeric joints that enable the miniaturization of devices, reduction of production costs, and increase in throughput. One of the major challenges in miniaturizing devices using in-mold assembly is to develop appropriate characterization techniques and modeling approaches for the interaction between polymer melt flow fronts and premolded components. When a high speed, high temperature second stage melt comes in contact with a premolded mesoscale component having similar melting temperatures, the premolded component e-mail:[email protected] Corresponding author: Address: Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2181 Glenn L. Martin Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA; phone: 301-405-5306; fax: 301-314-9477; e-mail:[email protected] e-mail:[email protected]