JPS5950488B2 - Manufacturing method for terminal equipment housing - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing housings for terminal equipment such as communication devices and computers, and aims to provide a method suitable for manufacturing small quantities of housings of many types. It is something to do.

A terminal operation panel in a telephone exchange or a terminal operation panel for data processing equipment in an electronic computer all require a keyboard or the like, and therefore the housing thereof requires a large number of holes.

Moreover, their forms vary, and they do not have a uniform shape. Therefore, in the past, it was not possible to make plastic molded products suitable for mass production, and metal products were manufactured using sheet metal processing. Although some were made of plastic molding, most of them were injection molded. As is well known, the injection molding method is a method in which heated and molten plastic material is injected and filled into a precision mold made in advance, and the hardened molded product is removed after cooling. However, when using this method, large-scale injection molding equipment is required, and the mold itself requires time-consuming and advanced processing as described above, so the mold is relatively expensive and has many limitations. . Therefore, although this method is suitable for mass producing products with uniform shapes, it is not suitable for manufacturing small quantities and a wide variety of housings with various shapes, as in the present invention. Ta. On the other hand, there have been attempts to use vacuum forming, which is relatively inexpensive to produce molds, but this method makes it difficult to adjust the wall thickness of the product, making it impossible to obtain a housing with uniform wall thickness. For this reason, it was not possible to obtain a housing with satisfactory strength. In this regard, the present invention is an attempt to eliminate the drawbacks of the conventional method, and it is possible to form housings of various shapes by applying a vacuum forming method that can be manufactured using relatively simple equipment, and by applying this method. By spraying reinforced plastic onto the vacuum-formed product, it is possible to give it a free shape and strength, thereby providing a manufacturing method suitable for manufacturing a wide variety of housings in small quantities.

To explain the present invention in detail based on drawings, we will first explain the thermoplastic resin sheet that is the housing material for terminal equipment.
(For example, using vinyl chloride, polystyrene, polyethylene, etc.) is prepared, loaded into the vacuum forming machine 1, and vacuum formed into a predetermined shape.

Fig. 2 is a diagram showing the principle of a vacuum forming machine, in which S is a thermoplastic resin sheet, 2 is a sheet clamp, 3 is a heater for heating and softening the sheet, 4 is a mold for molding, and 5 is a ventilator. It's a hole. In this molding machine 1, the sheet S heated and softened by the heater 3 is clamped onto the mold 4 (see () in Fig. 2), the air inside the mold is expelled, and the sheet S is pressed onto the mold surface by atmospheric pressure. to obtain a preformed product with a predetermined shape.
(First step). As already mentioned, keyboards and the like are indispensable for telephone exchanges, computer terminal operating devices, etc., and therefore the housing thereof requires a large number of holes.

Therefore, in the present invention, a large number of insertion holes for keyboards, etc., are punched at predetermined positions using a punching machine in the preformed product obtained by the above-described procedure (second step). By the way, since the preformed product obtained as described above is produced by a vacuum forming method, it is very difficult to control the thickness of the molded product.

Therefore, it is difficult to obtain a molded product with the desired strength, but in the present invention, a reinforced plastic (FRP) is sprayed onto the preformed product in the following manner to impart the desired strength. In that case, the required portions are masked in advance so that the reinforcing plastic ivy does not block the insertion hole for a keyboard or the like formed in the molded product (third step).

That is, after pasting a mount or the like to close the insertion hole, reinforced plastic is sprayed onto the back side of the molded product (fourth step). The reinforced blast sprayer uses glass fiber and unsaturated polyester resin as the main raw materials 5, and these are sprayed using an apparatus having the structure shown in FIG. 3, for example. In the figure, m is a preformed product before spray processing, 6 is glass fiber, 7 is a resin with only a catalyst added, 8 is a resin with only an accelerator added, 9 to 11 are spray guns, and 12 is glass glass. A cutter for cutting fibers, in which a resin containing a catalyst and a resin containing an accelerator are simultaneously sprayed onto a molded product m using separate spray guns, and the glass fibers cut by the cutter 12 are also sprayed onto the molded product m. and form it into the desired shape. The spraying process is finished. If so, the mount covering the holes is removed before the reinforced plastic is cured, and then appropriate finishing treatment is performed as required to obtain the final object, the housing M of the terminal device.
As described above, the method of manufacturing a housing according to the present invention uses a thermoplastic resin flat plate material, vacuum-forms it, perforates it, and then spray-coats reinforced plastic from the back side to form a housing of the desired shape. Since it is manufactured in a manner that requires no large-scale molding equipment as in conventional injection molding methods.

Furthermore, since the vacuum forming method is used, which requires relatively low mold costs, molded products of various shapes can be manufactured at low cost. Furthermore, in order to obtain the required strength, reinforced plastic was sprayed from the back side and then laminated, so the surface properties were no different from conventional plastic molded products, and it was given free shape and strength. This method can be expected to have excellent effects as a manufacturing method for small quantities and a wide variety of housings.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Figure 1 is a process diagram of the manufacturing method of the present invention, Figures 2 (a) to (b) are explanatory diagrams of the vacuum forming machine, and Figure 3 is F
FIG. 4, which is an explanatory diagram of the RP spraying machine, is a perspective view showing an example of a housing to be manufactured according to the present invention. S... Thermoplastic resin sheet, 1... Vacuum forming machine, 2
... seat clamp, 3... heater, 4... type,
5...Vent hole, 6...Glass fiber, 7,8...Unsaturated polyester resin, 9,10,11...Spray gun, 12...Katsuta, m...Preformed product, M...
·housing.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 A thermoplastic resin sheet is used, which is vacuum-formed into the desired shape and then perforated, and then unsaturated polyester resin and glass fiber are sprayed and laminated from the back side of the molded product. A method of manufacturing terminal equipment housings.