A systematic study on the effect of processing conditions on mold shrinkage was undertaken for seven common thermoplastic polymers. It turned out that the holding pressure was always the key parameter. The effect of the melt temperature is slightly less important. Injection velocity and mold temperature do not show a general trend for all polymers. It was shown that at least for amorphous polymers a simple thermoelastic model could describe all experimental results. For semi-crystalline materials the model overpredicts shrinkage.
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