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Slides designed with the
Slide Wizard in PS-Moldmaker |
Like other mould design systems, PS-Moldmaker allows users
to create the core and cavity design from the CAD model of the product
and then build up the remainder of the mould using standard components
from catalogues of leading suppliers. Drawings of the general assembly
of the mould and the individual components are generated automatically
as the design progresses, including a complete, associative set of fully-ballooned
drawings for all the plates, together with the related hole schedules
for drilling cycles. The Bills of Materials for the various suppliers
are also generated and updated automatically as the design is developed.
This enables components to be ordered as soon as they are specified so
allowing earlier delivery of the main plates, possibly even before the
overall design has been finalised.
However, PS-Moldmaker offers a broader solution than other similar systems,
both through the inclusion of catalogues from a wider range of standard
component suppliers and through built-in intelligence that allows the
software to recommend suitable standard component sizes at every stage.
PS-Moldmaker also includes a powerful range of Wizards to simplify many
parts of the process, including the Die Wizard for the creation of the
die blocks, the Slide Wizard, for slide design, and the Cooling Wizard,
for the placing of cooling channels.
As well as speeding the design process and helping to avoid mistakes,
the system’s intelligence means that it can cope with design changes
much more effectively than systems based purely on parametric design.
With the associative, parametric approach, changes are managed through
strict mathematical relationships. This means that any alterations to
the product design will often result in components with non-standard sizes.
These need to be made to order and so are more expensive and take longer
to acquire than standard components.
With PS-Moldmaker, in contrast, the software will recommend the nearest
standard size that can accommodate the change. While this does require
more operator input than the parametric approach to make the design change,
it ensures that standard components can be used as far as possible and
so reduces the overall cost and time to produce the tool. It also maintains
the user’s control over the design.
Inn addition, PS-Moldmaker is fully integrated with Delcam’s PowerSHAPE
hybrid modelling program. PowerSHAPE provides a wide range of tools to
repair any problems with the component design, including missing, duplicate,
overlapping or poorly-trimmed surfaces, before work begins on the mould
design.
Combining the two programs also gives PS-Moldmaker the unique ability
to produce non-standard components or mechanisms by allowing the user
to exit from the automated process at any stage, carry out some manual
adjustment to the design within PowerSHAPE, and then return to the automatic
methods to complete the mould. This means that users can benefit from
the speed and simplicity of the high level of automation, and can also
produce exactly the results they want, without any restriction on the
size or complexity of the work that they can undertake.
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