Mold Design Series

SolidWorks has quietly become a great tool for mold design.  Did you know that nearly 1/3 of our customers use SolidWorks in the tool/die/fixture industry?  In this series of blog posts, I will design an entire moldbase, from fixing an imported part, to running mold filling analysis, making design changes, drawings, waterlines, graphite and wire electrode creation, ect…

For the first part in this series, I have imported an IGES format file to use in SolidWorks.  This file needs to be checked for errors, not only on the data integrity side but on the moldability side too.  For example, we need to determine if the part will pull out of the mold, or if the part has the correct draft angles so the part does not stick.  And finally we need to see if it can even be filled with plastic in production.  See the video below for a 5 minute demonstration of this.

http://www.screencast.com/t/AOKgp4qz4j

I look forward to seeing you next week with the next step, which is fixing some of the errors that we found in the above video.  If you are looking for a preview on when the next blog post is ready to hit, try following me on twitter at http://twitter.com/mplafleche.