Patent ID: 7695654

Claim:
A molding-system method, comprising: a temperature-changing operation, including: an identification operation, including identifying a melt throughput being associated with molding articles using a barrel assembly; and a providing operation, including providing a calculated amount of thermal energy to the barrel assembly based on, at least in part, the melt throughput associated with the identification operation, and in response, the calculated amount of thermal energy that is provided to the barrel assembly changes temperature of a feedstock that is positioned in the barrel assembly from an out-of-barrel temperature to substantially within a processing-temperature range, further comprising: before manufacturing a molded article (I) a calculation operation, including calculating a thermal set-up for heaters coupled to the barrel assembly; (II) a determination operation, including determining of factors associated with the molded article; (III) a determining operation, including determining an amount of thermal energy to be transferred to the barrel assembly; (IV) an establishing operation, including establishing a thermal-energy distribution to be applied to heating zones of the barrel assembly; (V) an identifying operation, including identifying the amount of thermal energy is to be applied to each heating zone so that specific amounts of heat energy may be applied to selected heating zones; and (VI) an optimizing operation, including optimizing the thermal-energy distribution to be applied to the heating zones based on an optimization of molding-system processing requirements; and after the molded article is manufactured: (VII) a comparing operation, including; (i) comparing a shot weight used to mold an article against a shot-weight set point value, (ii) if the shot weight is significantly different than the shot-weight set point value: (A) adjusting a shot size to be injected into the mold, (B) determining the amount of thermal energy to be transferred to the barrel assembly based on the factors and based on a sum of thermal energy being lost to convection and radiation outside of the barrel assembly, and being lost to heat sinks at operating temperatures; and (VIII) a comparison operation, including: (i) comparing an indication of a molding-system cycle time against a cycle-time set point value, (ii) if the indication of the molding-system cycle time is sufficiently different from the cycle-time set point value: (A) re-adjusting the molding-system cycle time, (B) determining the thermal-energy distribution across the heating zones based on a processing optimization algorithm, which includes recalculating the thermal energy to be transferred to the barrel assembly so that a molding-system process is satisfied, and (C) re-adjusting a heater assembly being coupled with the barrel assembly so that the heater assembly may provide the thermal energy to the barrel assembly.