The Cutting Edge of Design – Part 10: Plastic Injection Engineer

Plastic Injection Engineer is a role on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform that allows the performing of fill analysis on plastic injection molded components. It will handle a simple part fill analysis to an entire mold study.

When we last visited our carving knife project, we learned about drop test simulation. In this installment, we will start with a simple part fill analysis to check gate location and determine if the part will fill in a mold. It will show us sink marks and venting locations as well. This will allow us to make any design changes before starting the mold design or cutting any tooling.

This article covers:

• Branch Revisions
• Plastic Part Filling
• Process Settings
• Injection Location
• Full Video on Injection Engineer

Branch Revisions

Since Plastic Injection Engineer is built on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we have full revision capabilities, not only for our part designs, but also for any simulation study. For our example here, a branch revision is created on the part. This will allow any design modifications specific to our analysis to stay with the study and not impact the production part. It maintains a link to the original part, so we always have a history of what we have completed.

 

Now that a version of the knife handle specific to the analysis exists, it can be opened in SOLIDWORKS Connected and modified to fit the needs of the study. In this case, the study will be run on one half of the part, so we can delete the body to modify the design for our simulation. The design is then simply saved back to the platform.

Plastic Part Filling

The part is now available for analysis in any 3DEXPERIENCE Simulation app. Once opened in our Plastic Part Filling Application, a wizard will guide us through the steps needed to complete the analysis.

Process Settings

The next step in the analysis is to define our process settings. Once the step is highlighted in the wizard, the process settings icon appears below and allows us to define the injection conditions. If you’re not sure of the initial conditions, a set of defaults is applied for you.

Injection Location

Next, we simply apply an injection location where plastic will enter our mold, and the assistant shows us that the study is ready to solve.

Within a few minutes, we can set up a simple fill study and analyze the results to determine if any changes need to be made to the design. Since the study is on the platform, we can also view the results in our web browser, allowing for an easy way to perform a design review with the rest of the team. We can then simply post these results in the community for the rest of the team to review.

Now that we’ve determined that the part will easily fill, and sink marks are acceptable, we can share the design for core and cavity creation.

Video Overview

Watch the video below for all the details on our simple part-fill analysis.

 

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