As a mechanical designer or engineer, have you ever wondered what it will take for the shop to manufacture youre design? I bet you may have had the machinist come over to your office and say, what are you crazy? We can;t make this make this part! The design stage is considered the most crucial component in the product lifecycle process – the platform for the conception and development of new products. Manufacturing companies continually fight the battle of lacking communication and coordination between the design and manufacturing departments. Approximately 80 percent or more of the life cycle costs of a product are determined during the design stage. Finding errors and fixing defects during the design stage is the optimal scenario to achieving both high quality and cost effective products.
Most engineers use an iterative approach to determining how a part will be made. The iterative approach to the design process involves the designer approaching the manufacturing department at an early stage to receive feedback to address any manufacturability concerns before they occur. This methodology is ideal and the desired process, however it is generally only feasible in an environment where the manufacturing & design departments are co-located. It is unusable with the “Design anywhere – Make anywhere” philosophy common throughout the world today. In addition, because it’s traditionally a manual process it is quite likely that some errors in a fairly complex part model may escape correction during a review.
Well, SolidWorks offers a tool called DFMXpress, (Design for Manufacturing) which combines a high level of functionality and accuracy with ease-of-use to give designers and engineers some basic manufacturing checks. Fully embedded inside of SolidWorks since version 2008 an available in everything from Standard SolidWorks and beyond, it is perfect for the designer who needs process analysis, but is not necessarily a manufacturing expert. DFMXpress allows you to easily gain insight into the manufacturability of your design under real world conditions. Essentially, it is a tool with manufacturing knowledge base for use by designers. Early identification of areas that are difficult to machine are identified. Recommend alternatives that will help manufacturing feasibility / cost savings are offered with the solution. It includes basic sets of rules for drilling, milling &
turning and now sheet metal manufacturing in SolidWorks 2010. The best thing is that rules and parameters can be configured using a simple Graphical User Interface with is seamlessly integrated into SolidWorks.
This tool help companies that have models other than native SolidWorks parts too. If you recall, SolidWorks opens many different types of models, like Pro/ENGINEER, UNIGRAPHICS NX, SolidEdge, Autodesk Inventor, Kubotek KeyCreator (Cadkey), Rhino and many intermediary formats like IGES, STEP, ACIS, Parasolid, ect… Since DFMXpress runs a Feature Based Automatic Feature Recognition engine, any model that SolidWorks can open can gain the benefits of the insight that DFMXpress provides.
Example of one rule
Above is one example with Holes with small diameters (less than 3.0 mm) or high depth-to-diameter ratios (greater than 2.75) are difficult to machine and are not recommended for convenient mass production. Deeper holes also make chip removal more difficult if the hole is blind.
Try this stuff out! These tools can be accessed in SolidWorks in the Tools… pull down menu or on the Evaluate CommandManager.
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