Plastic Mould Design

[Mwil]

Hi
I was trying to design plastic moulds using the Boolean command, this works for simple parts as per the tutorials, but when I have a more complicated part trying to subtract and isolate the core and then create a mould becomes extremely difficult if not impossible. Is there any more advanced tutorials related to the Boolean command that might help, or is there another way to develop a cavity and core that might be better?

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

Are you using the Boolean features in Part mode or Assembly? Assembly Boolean will create a dumb solid as a result. Part Boolean Features will maintain design history and update when the files are changed (sometimes exiting Alibre and opening the file again is required).

 

[HaroldL]

It looks like bigseb has been able to create moulds with AD. Maybe he can give you some pointers.

 

[bigseb]

... has been able to ...

lol... vote of confidence...

Yes. I design injection moulds with AD. And AD is surprising capable despite not having any fancy mould wizards. The key is to use configs. If you have a part file you like to share that would help. If you don't to share it on the forum then pm me a dropbox link.

 

[Mwil]

lol... vote of confidence...

Yes. I design injection moulds with AD. And AD is surprising capable despite not having any fancy mould wizards. The key is to use configs. If you have a part file you like to share that would help. If you don't to share it on the forum then pm me a dropbox link.

Thanks for responding. These are the parts I am trying to make moulds for, I'm using Boolean in the part environment and I can subtract it from a block no problems, but it's very difficult, if not impossible, to create a fixed and moving half of a mould for complete with a workable shutt face. I'm thinking that I need to create surfaces to go about this task, but I cannot seem to be able to do this as well. I'm a plastics toolmaker and I know my way around tooling, I just can't seem to be able to get my head around AD and Boolean to produce what I want. See attached parts

 

[DJA]

Thanks for responding. These are the parts I am trying to make moulds for, I'm using Boolean in the part environment and I can subtract it from a block no problems, but it's very difficult, if not impossible, to create a fixed and moving half of a mould for complete with a workable shutt face. I'm thinking that I need to create surfaces to go about this task, but I cannot seem to be able to do this as well. I'm a plastics toolmaker and I know my way around tooling, I just can't seem to be able to get my head around AD and Boolean to produce what I want. See attached parts

I reviewed your parts. I presume you will be injection molding? Overall the parts do not look too complex. Boolean could be utilized, but will take a lot of work. I have done mold design with Autodesk Inventor in a similar manor, but was a lot of work. I then switched over to SolidWorks which has "Mold Tools" which reduce the design time by 90% (my est). I realize AD does not have these (SW) tools, but the reason I mention this is that there are a lot of YouTube tutorials on design molds with SolidWorks that will give you a good idea of how the process works, and may help you get a handle of how to utilize in AD. Before you do anything, make copies of your parts, then you will want to apply a "shrink factor for the specific material you will be molding. This is typically shown as "/" and can be obtained from the material manufactory. You will then "up scale" your parts by that rate. Then the fun begins. I had to surrender my SolidWorks license 12 years ago when I retired, otherwise I would have been glad to design the mold Cav & Core for you. Maybe find someone with SW that would help. I would estimate it would only take a hour or so to generate cavity and core for each part. Good luck...

 

[Mwil]

I reviewed your parts. I presume you will be injection molding? Overall the parts do not look too complex. Boolean could be utilized, but will take a lot of work. I have done mold design with Autodesk Inventor in a similar manor, but was a lot of work. I then switched over to SolidWorks which has "Mold Tools" which reduce the design time by 90% (my est). I realize AD does not have these (SW) tools, but the reason I mention this is that there are a lot of YouTube tutorials on design molds with SolidWorks that will give you a good idea of how the process works, and may help you get a handle of how to utilize in AD. Before you do anything, make copies of your parts, then you will want to apply a "shrink factor for the specific material you will be molding. This is typically shown as "/" and can be obtained from the material manufactory. You will then "up scale" your parts by that rate. Then the fun begins. I had to surrender my SolidWorks license 12 years ago when I retired, otherwise I would have been glad to design the mold Cav & Core for you. Maybe find someone with SW that would help. I would estimate it would only take a hour or so to generate cavity and core for each part. Good luck...

The part is from one of my ex-students and it is part of a university project he submitted, and by the way, he got a high destination for it. Because of my experience in mould tooling I gave him some pointers of how to go about creating a workable moulded part. This is a real project though and is part of a medical apparatus, the company liked his work so much he is now their production and design engineer. Altho this part is designed for moulding the numbers are too small at the moment for production tooling and so it will just be 3D printed. My interest is, can I use AD to design a cavity and core, so it's not critical to consider other aspects of tooling such as shrinkage and the like? If I can find a way to do this I will consider designing tooling in the future, but at the moment I'm still a bit of a novice to AD and reluctant to undertake a tool design for the real world until I'm sure it will work. I'm familiar with other CAD programs and I used to teach them at a local college but I just want to see if AD can work for injection moulds. I have had a few ideas that I will try and if anybody has any input on this it would be great.

 

[DJA]

The part is from one of my ex-students and it is part of a university project he submitted, and by the way, he got a high destination for it. Because of my experience in mould tooling I gave him some pointers of how to go about creating a workable moulded part. This is a real project though and is part of a medical apparatus, the company liked his work so much he is now their production and design engineer. Altho this part is designed for moulding the numbers are too small at the moment for production tooling and so it will just be 3D printed. My interest is, can I use AD to design a cavity and core, so it's not critical to consider other aspects of tooling such as shrinkage and the like? If I can find a way to do this I will consider designing tooling in the future, but at the moment I'm still a bit of a novice to AD and reluctant to undertake a tool design for the real world until I'm sure it will work. I'm familiar with other CAD programs and I used to teach them at a local college but I just want to see if AD can work for injection moulds. I have had a few ideas that I will try and if anybody has any input on this it would be great.

Congratulations on the success of you and your students. Now I better understand your goal. I do have several years of mold design with SolidWorks but surrendered my license when I retired. I have only just begun a couple months ago with Adom3D, so am a novice with the software myself but I do not see any Boolean features. I presume they are in the "design" package As I am now retired I have not the funds to purchase more powerful software (IE SolidWorks or AD). Atom3D appears to be a basic package, and works well for me as I only use it as a play around hobby to keep me busy. Hopefully one of the other members can help point you in the right direction with AD.

 

[bigseb]

... can I use AD to design a cavity and core

Short answer: Yes.

This is a very simple part and creating cavity splits from this is easy as pie. I will gladly throw something together for you...

... BUT...

... the imported file is in a terrible state. AD is dismal at repairing files and iges is a terrible format anyway. Working with bad files in AD generally makes all downline work increasingly difficult. Please upload the original iges/step files and I'll take a look again.

 

[Mwil]

OK guys, I came up with a way of doing this, but I'm not sure if it's the correct way of going about it, see video link. (Note the video is a little rough and ready but it gets the point across)

If anybody has a better way of doing this I'd appreciate the input, included is the file of the part that I used.

 

[bigseb]

Didn't watch your video. Went at this from a different angle:

Firstly I loaded your part into Alibre... tons of errors. Seriously, its not in good shape. I then loaded it into Moi and started picking it apart and tried to repair it. Took a while but got a result. Loaded that into AD and got a ton of errors. Different errors but errors nonetheless.

Next I remodelled the part file from scratch in Moi. Did three different versions using different methods each time. Each model was a solid with zero naked edges. I exported each of the models in .3dm, .stp and .sat formats. None would import into AD with no errors. Tried various import setting too.

Then I modelled only the base shape:

as this is the most complicated shape in the whole model and not worthwhile bothering to recreate in AD. I did this 3 different ways too, again using different methods each time and exporting each in three different formats. Only one imported with zero errors even this was not editable i.e. I could not shell the part do any other work.

FWIW I have worked a lot with imported files in the past. These were generated (mostly) with Catia and Solidworks. The SW parts were generally no problem, Catia not so much. Either way, loading the files in Moi and doing a quick repair and then importing that into AD was not a problem.

For whatever reason AD cannot do what it used to do. I have noticed this a while already (starting about three years ago) but I don't what has changed that could affect this. But after spending two solid days (my weekend) trying to get this to work and failing my fears wrt AD functionality seem to be confirmed. I honestly cannot recommend AD if you're using it with imported files. If the part file had been generated in AD then creating mould plates would be a doddle taking minutes.

 

[Mwil]

Man, that's a lot of work, I'm wondering if it's posable to design moulds on imported parts at all. I went on to design a mould based on the video I made, but I wonder if it's possible to use it to machine a cavity and core in the real world. Oh well, I still use AD for designing clocks and its rather good for that. Once I'm happy with the work I have done on this project, for what its worth, I'll put the file of the cavity and core up on the forum and see what people think.

 

[bigseb]

UPDATE:

I have kept at it and managed some success. Took way longer than it should have so ADs import failings aren't off the hook but it looks like I might have something to show for my efforts. Give me some time to wrap things up though.