Three dimensional-based mold design solutions are being used for the development of injection molds, allowing mold tooling companies to shorten their development times and automate mold manufacturing.

Also with 3-D, the quality of the design gets better because of the excellent possibilities to analyze the design.

To support the user as much as possible, a high-end mold design system has to provide such features as a 3-D standard catalog, automatic creation of a bill of materials and CNC programs as well as the possibility to store the moldmaker’s knowledge by integrating its own standards and design methods.

The growing complexity of today’s plastic and die cast parts makes it necessary for the mold design system to provide both the ability to handle free-form surface data well and to manipulate this surface data – regardless of its originating source or system. Also, because a mold is a complex assembly with many predefined rules, the mold design system should know these rules and automatically set the corresponding constraints.

Based on the 3-D data of the product, the core and cavity have to be designed first. Modern CAD systems can support this with calculating a split line for a defined draft direction, splitting the part in the core and cavity side and generating the run-off or shut-off surfaces. Then, in the conceptual stage, the positions and the geometry of the functional mold components – such as slides, ejection system, etc. – are roughly defined. With this information, the size and thickness of the plates can be defined and the corresponding standard mold can be chosen from the standard catalog. If no standard mold fits these needs, the standard mold that comes nearest to the requirements is chosen and changed accordingly – by adjusting the constraints and parameters so that any number of plates with any size can be used in the mold. Detailing the functional components and adding the standard components complete the mold. This all happens in 3-D.

Through the use of 3-D and the intelligence of the mold design system, typical 2-D mistakes – such as a collision between cooling and components/cavities or the wrong position of a hole – can be eliminated at the beginning. At any stage a bill of materials and drawings can be created – allowing the material to be ordered on time and always having an actual document to discuss with the customer or a bid for a mold base manufacturer.

Simultaneous engineering is another key expression that has to be supported by a mold design system in two ways. When there is a tight timeline, the system must allow for more than one designer working on the same mold at the same time. Also, even with a part file or part database, which is in its early development or which is expected to be changed drastically, it must be possible to complete a preliminary mold design and then import the new database after it’s finalized.