Non-Uniform Shrink without Pro/Mold

[SteveTG]

How does one apply non-uniform shrink without Pro/Mold? For instance, I would like to apply X1.01, y1.01 and z1.005 shrink. I am migrating to Pro/E and do not have the Pro/Mold package. I have herd that people design injection molds without the pro/mold package, so there must be some decent work around. I have run a search, but did not come up with any real answers. Thank you.

 

[pjw]

Hello,



I don't think it is possible to apply non-uniform shrinkage without Pro/Mold. The way you can do it without is simply by taking a copy of your part and scaling it by the relevant factor, but you end up with x,y and z factors all being the same. I use non-uniform shrinkage for investment casting tooling and know of no other way.



Sorry wasn't much help.



Phil

 

[gggggggggg]

Here is a terribly complicated work around. This probably won't be of much use, but in theory, it will work.



Once your model is complete, save a copy of it. Take the new model and manually adjust each and every dimension by multiplying it by the appropriate shrinkage factor.



As you probably figured out by now, if you have a small part with a small number of features, this won't be too big of a task. BUT, if you have a large part with a large number of features, you could spend days manually adjusting dimensions.



The days required to manually adjust every dimension should be enough for you to justify your company making the investment in Pro/Mold software. As you know, with the Pro/Mold software, the days required is shrunk to a few minutes.

 

[SteveTG]

Thanks for any advise. My company is me and $7,000 plus $920 year maintenance is difficult to justify,since I can only devote part time to it for the next few years. When I purchased a seat Foundation Advantage I was told it could do anything that Cadkey21.5 could do and more. I was also told that a lot of people design molds without the Pro/Mold package. There must be away around this...is it a big secret?

 

[rcamp]

Pay someone with ProMold to add a shrink feature to your model. You will probably have to have ProMold to change its values also, but once you get the values set to what you need you should be good to go.



I could not imagine doing mold splits without ProMold. If someone says they are, they probably aren't doing full mold design, although its greatest tool is the volume splitting functionality and runner design, the rest is assembly/surface functionality.

 

[gggggggggg]

I am doing mold design (zinc die casting actually) without Pro/Mold. These are full feature dies with stepped parting lines, multiple slides, inserts & sub-inserts, ect... I in no way at all need Pro/Mold. It sure would be easier, but I consider myself an expert user and can model any die configuration I've seen.



Although, with zinc, we use a constant shrinkage value, so I don't know what to tell you about that.