Five-axis manufacturing techniques have long been used in the aerospace and power generation fields. This may be due to component geometry as found in gas turbine engines or automotive turbochargers, or complex and critical components such as landing gear on an aircraft. Or it may be an artifact of new computer-aided designs that use monolithic [...]
Most of the five-axis “magic” is managed by software in the CNC control and CAM software systems. The machine tool should be selected for sizes, speeds and capacities. And five-axis machine costs are coming down, and quality is improving with the implementation of CAD and simulation in the design process. […]
For those customers who refuse to pay for Moldflow analysis, First-rate Mold engineers and its customers mutually agree upon gate locations.if the gate location is not accurate, First-rate Mold more often than not absorbs the costs to rework the gating. That situation alone makes me more of a Moldflow advocate, […]
Runner sizing is a very important decision for a moldmaker. In hot runners, the moldmaker may seek to minimize the runner diameters in order to reduce melt residence time, reduce color change cycles or allow tighter pitch for drops. In cold runner molds, smaller runners mean lower material wastage. However, smaller runners in hot and [...]
A common challenge faced by moldmakers is to produce acceptable parts with minimum cycle time. As cooling time accounts for most of the cycle time, reducing the cooling time of a part will considerably reduce the cycle time. However, reducing the cooling time also may result in problems, such as excessive part warpage, high part [...]
The goal of tool engagement controlled milling is to achieve the highest possible productivity. This requires gaining complete control of the cutting environment in order to cut optimally everywhere along the toolpath. To cut optimally means to create chips with the optimal geometry for the particular tool being used and the particular material being cut. [...]
All the time spent tweaking and re-tweaking the CAM program is a hidden cost, typically absorbed into general shop overhead where it cannot be accurately accounted for. In addition, the out-of-spec parts created during the tweaking process lead to costly scrap and rework. […]
The types of users most likely to benefit from FBM programming strategies fall into a number of categories. Within each category, the advantages users are likely to obtain are also varied. […]
Feature-Based Machining(FBM) is an automated programming function that eliminates manual data entry by reading in the copious design intent information that is embedded in solid models by CAD programs. […]
Perhaps one of the more interesting markets we’ve seen in moldmaking in recent years is applying North American quality to overseas molds. In other words, shops are finding that making poorly made molds work properly, even having to re-machine features or whole molds, is an area of growth potential. […]