Simulation | product design
itself very evident is in mould cooling, which has such a critical influence on cycle times and part quality. “There was a time when we saw a lot of inefficient cooling but also we often saw a tendency to over design the cooling, putting in far too many bubblers and baffles,” he says. “Software now shows when this is unnecessary.
It
could be that a cooling channel just needs to be a slightly larger diameter to get turbulent flow or moved a fractional amount closer to the cavity. In high volume projects a very small saving in cycle time can be very significant.” While certainly an enthusiast for identifying and
solving potential problems in the virtual environment, Henry makes it clear that predictive tools are just that – a set of tools. There will continue to be a place in his future virtual world for the specific skills of the tooling and moulding engineers. “We are trying to get to a system where the part designer can do a bit of physical analysis: produce a design and fill it, check if they are getting warpage. It is not an expert system, it is simply giving the designer some information on which to make a decision.” ❙
www.autodesk.com
Eric Henry is technical sales manager manufacturing covering Northern Europe for Autodesk, developer of the Autodesk, AutoCad, Inventor and Moldflow family of engineering design and manufacturing software. More information about Autodesk’s vision of simulation- driven design is available in its Real-Time Plastic Injection Molding Simulation white paper, which can be downloaded here.
Above:
Moldflow was used to predict filling and cycle time for this PC speaker housing
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