A well-designed injection molded part depends on many factors. The correct flow of resin into the mold is one of them. Moldflow is a professional software to simulate injection molding, which is used to simulate the flow of resin in the geometry of parts in a digital manner. The resulting data will essentially help you design better molded parts and molds.

How does Moldflow improve mold design?

It helps you to place the gate.

It shows the location of the weld lines, allowing you to improve the appearance and physical properties of the parts.

It can locate fault points that are difficult to fill into parts.

It tells you if we can fill your parts with the selected material.

The analysis also examines how the resin flows at a given temperature and injection pressure. As the material cools, it begins to harden, and this is why the gate pressure increases. The higher the pressure, the more difficult the fill, which translates to greater concern about weak knit lines (contributing to poor part integrity), flash, sink, and shorts.

Plastics with good flow properties include polypropylene, K-resin, HDPE, LDPE and unfilled nylon. Resins such as PC and ABS/polycarbonate tend to be less liquid.

Moldflow aims to identify problems that may be caused by these hard-to-flow materials and other problems such as thin walls and complex geometries, thus providing solutions to improve fluidity and mouldability.

There are many simple parts that may not require any gate location analysis and can be molded based on past history or known gate locations. Yes, you will be able to mold these parts, but you may also miss opportunities to improve product design, save runner waste, save material or process, optimize design, mold/injection molding and reduce cycle time. Because plastic materials are still evolving, newer materials offer many ways to save money and improve design, part quality, while different options for radical design changes can combine multiple parts or applications into a single tool. If you haven’t seen any older typical parts/applications, it’s a good idea to review them before building the next mold.

Mold filling analysis of new parts is definitely helpful. Many people agree that if you want to optimize design, tooling, process and assembly, then new part design should be checked for filling, pressure，pack, cooling, shrinkage and warping analysis and finite element analysis. However, only experienced expert engineering resources can provide the greatest value and solutions. Anyone who knows how to use CAE software is not an expert. Years of product expertise in a variety of industries, a high degree in plastics and mold/molding experience are critical to finding the right solution with the best value. Many CAE sources do not have the appropriate expertise, experience, and may only offer a limited type of service. You may incur high upfront costs, but you may never realize any real benefits of using the right source. It’s easy to provide results to fill parts with quick analysis or detailed 3D analysis, but unless you use the right source, you may never know if it’s the best solution. You may get parts, but you may encounter warping, longer cycle times, processing problems, production inconsistencies, engineering change costs, mold problems, product failures, weld lines, stress problems, short product life, poor material selection, poor processing. Settings and so on. If you have the right sources that can immediately identify these problems in advance and provide the right solution, such problems will not occur no matter how many iterations are required to provide the best solution. When you select any engineering service, we can provide you with a complete understanding and understanding of all possible issues resources. This will help you avoid higher costs throughout the product life cycle. We have the expertise to provide design, engineering, finite element analysis, process simulation, mold design, processing, problem solving and project management support. Please contact us for detailed information on mold design, analysis types, machining problems and other details.

Many project engineers, program managers, plant managers or higher managment of typical custom molding facility are always cautious of additional costs for their typical applications. Few hundreds or few thousands of upfront engineering cost is still met with some resistance even if there is a long term benefit because it is not simple to quantify the benefit of advanced engineering. Very few companies think of advanced engineering techniques such as moldflow, FEA, process simulation as a possible option to eliminates many of daily problems at the plant level. Robust advanced engineering and optimization of your design, tooling, and processing can certainly eliminate many plant level manufacturing issues. It can be the most value added solution to get a consistent quality product. When you do upfront engineering of each part, it can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in overall costs. However, when you start having issues with parts, processing, assemblies, production, the whole corporation starts to pay for higher operational costs. CEO/executive management is then willing to pay hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to solve the problem. Some companies even go through sudden cost cutting methods or pay outside management consultants to tell them to how to reduce work force, cut costs, reduce engineering or else. However, any good company never walks away from upfront robust and advanced engineering tools to optimize their each and every product. Those companies that use upfront advanced engineering techniques to control their product development and manufacturing costs are always very efficient in their operations, have better profit margins, have the highest quality products, and have the highest customer satisfaction.  Cost savings through cost cuttings or HR elimination shows up on instantaneous improvement in profits for short term, but does not solve the long term problem. Upfront robust engineering and advanced engineering not only eliminates many design, tooling and processing issues, but also offers savings through less engineering changes, costs savings through optimization of material, design, tooling, processing, and manfucaturing costs.  On the other hand, if you use any source that offers simply cheap pricing, then you may be adding more costs to your existing operations and dig a deeper hole. It is as much more important to select the right source. Gold or silver Certified moldflow consultants are tested for software use, but not for their experience in design, tooling, or molding, educational qualifications, industry experience, or innovative solutions abilities. Gold certified sources does not mean you get the best value from those sources.  It is very important to check overall experience, expertise, educational background as well full capability for all engineering services. Furthermore your source should be able to fully understand all aspects of design, functional requirements, product testing, assembly, manufacturing, finite element analysis, material choices, process choices, and a complete expert in the field.