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Mold Design Professional Questionaire

Jmorton76

New member
Hello all, I have some questions for any mold designers out there to try and guage where our industry is at regarding 3D design. I have worked at 3 companies in the last 8 years, and have only done mold design in proe. All 3 places I've worked we have created very advanced library components utilizing basic proe functionality (such as parameters, relations, and pro/program). The way I design molds ispretty quick, but we would like to cover all our boundaries before moving forward with our entire department on ProE doing complete mold design/detailing. We are exploring PTC's EMX Expert moldbase extension. I am curious of the following items and would be interested to hear what others are doing. I appreciate your time in advance:


1) CAD software used for mold design?


2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy?


3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold?


4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates?


5)turnaround time for complete design?


6)turnaround time for detail?


7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"?


8)Qty designers using proe?


9)Using intralink or not?


10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe?


11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take?


12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe?


13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull?


14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically?


15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this?


all international mold design professionals welcome to participate.


I think I may have more questions later as I get input back. Feel free to ask me questions.


Lastly, I am located in Milwaukee WI, and I work for a large custom mold builder/molder. I would be interested in getting in contact with other professionals doing this same thing I do, and maybesharing knowledge?


Again, thanks everyone for your time
 
You've got some million dollar questions there Joe.


I'll email you my answers even though you may already know where most of my background came from. Hope all is well in Milwaukee!
 
Joe, here you go I hope this helps.
smiley4.gif



1) CAD software used for mold design? Pro/engineer.<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" />


2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy? Complex to simple.


3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold? Promold.


4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates? Both, we have used EMX for 4 years with our standard mold bases and Mud sets. We use our owncustom start parts for our special molds that are not avaible in EMX.


5)turnaround time for complete design? 1 1/2 Weeks.


6)turnaround time for detail? 2-3 days.


7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"? Yes.


8)Qty designers using proe? 5 Designers 3 Programers


9)Using intralink or not? No.


10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe? 5 years.


11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take? <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">6 months initial transition fairly smooth. 1-2 years to become really efficient. [/I][/B]


12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe? <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">No[/I][/B]


13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull? <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">No and Solidworks sucks.[/I][/B]


14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically? <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">75-150 includes bolts dowels etc.[/I][/B]


15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this? <B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">15-20 hours for initial setup after that very little time.[/I][/B]
 
1) CAD software used for mold design? Mold designers-2-proe, 3 Autocad. Programming-probably 2-3 on proe, 2-3 on UG (not too sure), plus 2-3 proe modelers dedicated to modeling parting line and pulling electrodes. There is another facility we have but I'm not sure of the quantity of individuals on what systems, probably about same quantity.


2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy? All types, multi-shot, high cavitation to simple washer molds.


3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold? I do not use promold, butmy coworkerswho model parting line do in most cases. Sometimes they resort to surfacing, but not too often.


4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates? I use custom home-grown moldbase templates and component libraries. My coworker uses EMX. We have not compared the speed of the two yet side-by-side.


5)turnaround time for complete design? Preliminary - 6-15 hours, then for finalized design released to manufacturing, easy jobs take me8-15 hours max, while complex designs probably 50-60 hours max (maybe 100 for high cavitation 2 shot molds). With our Pro - toolkit programmer, I can see with some work the possibility of cutting another 25-50% off our total design time. Since I've seen what he can do, with my collaboration I think we can troubleshoot all the "tedious" or time-consumingareas ofdesign and make some efficiency improvements.


6)turnaround time for detail? Complete detail of all custom components including plates-4-6 hours easy jobs, 20-25 hourson difficult jobs. Within 6 months we will be bypassing mold plate detailing, because we will be automating plate machining.


7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"? Yes, whenever it permits. We have found relying on customer to understand all the "hows and whys" of what you're asking for takes too much time. Usually they do not have the resources available to have their product designer update model for us....so basically for the last 6-7 years, I have taken that responsibility on.


8)Qty designers using proe? (answered above #1)


9)Using intralink or not? 1st employer, no, 2nd employer - yes, current employer - no. My personal opinion is if you have more than 5 people all on the same skill level of proe mold design, having Intralink is a more valuable tool for two reasons - concurrent engineering and organization/protection of data.


10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe? current employer main designers use AutoCAD, but there are 3-4 individuals that have been using proe for several years. prior employer I converted engineering department from CADkey to Proe (4 people including myself)


11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take? Current employer has been talking about 3D transition for several years and still haven't made the move. Last employer-transition was less than a year. empoyer before that, probably took several years.


12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe? I did not know what Jlink was until my current employer. We have a programming wiz well versed in Jlink. He has made several awesome improvements to proe. For instance to detail a mold plate - two clicks, first the plate, then a central plate coordinate system. It rocks.


13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull? I do not


14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically? simple - 100-150, complex 400-600 components


15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this? Depends, up front work is definitely 2-3 days minimum, more complex assemblies 5+ days. I try to build as much flexibility and functionality into my components and assemblies to of course, save as much time as possible and also to not put myself into a corner while designing.


On a side note, I was at a WF 3.0 sneak peek last week and they showed us a chart doing some comparisions in efficiency and speed of all the 3D cad systems, and they are saying proe WF 2 and 3 are the fastest and most efficient. Is it true or not, I have no idea.
 
Helo.....

U hav mentioned in your message you are working on Mold Design Since last 08 Years..

I am begineer user for Pro-Engineer.

PLease help me on some folowing issues

1-When i translate Model from Solid Edge to Pro-Engineer in igs format
and i would try to generate parting lines of the model.The model
shows error messgae "Gaps in your Model""

How to fill and find out gaps in the Model

How to apply shrinkage on the Model in Part or in Manufacturing--Mold Module

Please clarify with example

which one is better wway to apply shrinkage .

Shrinkage should apply to Model before assembling with workPiece or after



My email is ::;; [email protected]

If u provdide me some Literature I will be very thankful



I will wait for your positive responce
 
1) ProE 2001 (main work horse). We alsouse Cadkey and Mastercamfor a few applications


2) We mainly deal withlarge molds (2to 30 tons),but we also do smaller molds (1 ton or less).We do both steel and aluminum molds. The complexity ranges from easy to hard.


3) We use Promold.


4) Standard assembly. We have a library of custom components, and UDF's that we use.


5) Varies from 35 hrs to 200 hrs. Most mold designs fall in the 60 to 100 hr range.


6) Detail takes typically 15 to 30 hrs. We are working towards a paperless or near paperless system.


7) We do modify parts for cuttablity in some circumstances, but in some circumstances we have the customer modify their models.


8) 4 full time users, 4 partial users (detailing, or learning)


9) Not using Intralink right now, maybe in the future.


10) I've been using Pro around 7 years. We've been gradually adding users for the past 5 years.


11) The transition is getting better, but is still kinda rough and I would say around 6 months is fair transition period, depending on devoted time using Pro soley.


12) Never heard of it.


13) Hear Solidworks is good, but I don't think it's as powerful.


14)Components vary from15 to50 components or more depending on the complexity. We do not havean automated BOM creation. Automated BOM creation would not work with our business system which we use for orderin components.


15) Almost all of our slides, lifters, cams, etc. are custom designs due to their large size, and are design on a case by case situation. Components are added to our customer library occasionally. When a component is needed, we added, there is not consistent focus on this area. We also use the internet to download component models that we may need at times from mold componet suppliers.


I'd like to see what feed back you get from your forum. If you could email any feedback it would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,


Darin Swartzendruber


MSI Mold Builders
 
Hi Jmorton<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" />


CAD software used for mold design? Pro E wild fire 2


2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy? Extremely hard


3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold? Pro mold


4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates? All three


5)turnaround time for complete design? 2 hrs to a week


6)turnaround time for detail? 1 to 7 days


7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"? some time or as per requirement


8)Qty designers using proe ? 10


9)Using intralink or not? nop


10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe? 6 yrs


11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take? Almost smooth and takes approx one year


12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe? no


13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull? no


14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically? 25 to above 100


15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this? 2 hrs to a week
Zaki
 
Hello Zaki! does your company do multishot molding? You say the parts you do are extremely hard, do they have many actions? Do you design high cavitation molds? When you create start components and assemblies, do you use pro/program a lot? Do you use automatic BOM creation? When you use promold to model parting line for very complex parts, is it difficult to update design with new part model?


The company I work for (www.mgstech.com& www.multishot.com)does very much multishot molding, spin stack molds, blowmolding, In mold decorating, they have designed and sell their own portable injection units and indexing tables,and many things which I have not yet learned. My prior two employers dealt with automotive field, and mainly did custom molds, small to medium sized, some very complex, usually 1,2,4 cavities mostly. (prior employers - www.industrialmolds.com & www.foremantool.com)


My company is evaluating EMX for consideration of making entire engineering department standardize. They are paying for "in-house" training. One designer we have uses it full time. He likes it but says there are some bugs. I am going to play around with it for the next month, and also use ProMold to model some parting lines (I've never used either). Designers I've worked with in the past who DO use ProMold most of the time to model parting lines, say that when they have very complex parting lines and many actions, they found its more stable to NOT use ProMold. For the sole reason that when you have to make part changes later, design is more stable.


Thanks for posting, talk to ya later!


Joe
 
1) CAD software used for mold design?Pro E Wildfire 2.0, cimitron for break outs, Power mill, surf cam and master cam for machining


2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy? both hard & easy


3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold? Surfacing in ProMold


4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates?Standard assy.


5)turnaround time for complete design? 6-30 hrs


6)turnaround time for detail? Work directly off models, no drawings


7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"? Yes, case by case basis


8)Qty designers using proe? 2


9)Using intralink or not? no


10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe? 5-6 years, only been here 6 months


11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take? Judging by the work the guy I replaced did, I would say 5 years


12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe? no


13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull? no


14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically? 50 -100, no detail or auto BOM


15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this? N/A
 
Hi Joe<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:eek:ffice:eek:ffice" />
Actually I didn
 
1) CAD software used for mold design?Inserts=100% ProE, Molds 60% ProE



2)complexity of parts being tooled - hard or easy? They are all uncastable the first time we see them!



3)method for splitting parting line - surfacing or promold? ProMold



4)method for moldbase design - standard assembly, EMX, or custom templates? I guess Custom Templates & Stardard



5)turnaround time for complete design? I
like to put my heart and soul into my drawings, but this is the real
world. So the faster the better in most minds. For a toolmaker to
create a Diecast mold/complete from hard copy only prints (minus
electrodes) on a two cavity mold would be at 2



6)turnaround time for detail?with completed model, next day for cutterpath.......



7)do you modify your customers part models for "toolability"? If
we can't casr them someone has to do it. By the time we get it the
customer no longer has time to work on it...Mainly Draft, Rounds, and
Parting line problems....



8)Qty designers using proe?3

9)Using intralink or not?no

10)how long has your engineering dept.been using proe?longer than 5 years



11)how smooth was your department's transition to proe? and how long did it take? n/a



12)does anyone use Jlink or any other programming softwares for "workarounds" or advanced menu creation in proe? n/a



13)do you know any other professionals using another CAD system for
complete 3D mold design that is highly efficient and powerfull? n/a

14)if you're doing complete 3d mold design , how many components average, and are you creating BOM automatically? 40, & No



15)if you are creating custom slide assemblies, components, etc., how much time (%) is your department committing to this? All cutom. It must add 3 to 4 days at least....




Cool thread..............Pro Engineer Rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
solidworks is good enough for mold design, it is a versatile software that handles dessign for sheet metal, moldings, castings, machined parts and many other processes.

yes a great emphasis must be placed on tooling constraints when analysing and reviewing customer components. Designs need to me manufacturable, ie you need to avoid over designing componets or making them very hard to make given your tooling constraints. Whereas quality requirements and functionality NEED NOT be compromized, care must be taken not to make unachievable designs. For this reason you need to fully understand the part's intended function, its mates with other assembly components, assess it and eliminate any redundant feautures. This constitute extra cost and yet add no value
 

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