![]() Help for the solids-challenged comes in form of 15 new software products that automate the most repetitive aspects of injection mold design. "We do all the grunt work," says Bob Nofftle, president of Cimlogic, a supplier of mold-base software. The new products automate the design process to varying degrees, but many go as far as to enable creation of a solid mold assembly with just a few mouse clicks. Much of that added speed comes from the ability of most software to handle design revisions automatically or semi-automatically. The parametric and associative nature of the underlying solid modelers adds a kind of built-in intelligence. So changes made to one element of the mold design update the dimensions and locations of all the related elements. ![]() VERO VISI PRO ENGINEER KONVERTIEREN UPDATEįor example, re-sizing a mold plate will also update the size and location of all the holes, bushings, and other features associated with that plate. Changes also carry through to the bill of materials and production drawings, providing even greater time savings.Īnother class of solids mold-design software focuses only on the mold assembly, without offering automation tools for core-and-cavity work beyond the generic functionality of the CAD system. ![]() In other respects, this type of mold-base creation software can have just as many features and as much built-in design intelligence as high-end systems. Or, in some cases, it can have fewer capabilities and can function as a low-cost, plug-in solids library of mold bases and components. Though the software products differ in how much automation they offer, almost all of them involve roughly the same steps to produce a solid model of a mold assembly:ġ) After creating or importing a 3-D part model, users create cores and cavities around that model, using either automated routines, generic CAD operations, or some combination of the two to arrive at the parting surfaces.Ģ) Following the core-and-cavity work, users pick a mold-base size in which the core/cavity inserts will fit. (Most systems can support direct impression of the core and cavity into the mold plates.) Depending on the software, the process will be all but automatic. ![]() Users typically have to enter some information through a drop-down menu or dialog box. All of today's mold-design software offers one or more libraries of solid geometry for mold bases and components from popular vendors. Much of the software also lets users work with custom base sizes.ģ) Through a dialog or menu interface, users add all the tool's functional components-from gates, runners, ejection, cooling, and slides right down to individual screws, pins, and bushings.
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