Product category:
Mould and die making, machining, CAD/CAM, software
News Release from: Moldflow Vertriebs | Subject: Plastics design analysis software
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 February 2006
Plastics simulation software adds speed,
accuracy
Plastics simulation software has coupled 3D Flow solver up to eight times faster, and renders more accurate temperature and shear heating calculations and predicts air traps.
Moldflow Corporation, the leading provider of design through manufacturing solutions for the plastics injection molding industry, announced release 6.0 of Moldflow Plastics Insight (MPI), the industry's most powerful and widely used plastics design analysis software MPI 6.0 delivers new technologies and key enhancements that help users work more efficiently, significantly reduce solution time, interact better with CAD, structural analysis and other Moldflow applications, and better understand and communicate analysis results
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 31 Aug 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Two new technologies in MPI 6.0 bring significant breakthroughs for 3D filling and warpage applications.
The new coupled 3D Flow solver is up to eight times faster, and renders more accurate temperature and shear heating calculations, new capabilities to predict air traps and to simulate gas penetration in 1D beam elements, and the first-of-its-kind capability to simulate jetting phenomena.
Similarly, new 3D Warp solver technology delivers results up to 35 times faster.
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Predict, eliminate plastics manufacturing problems
Moldflow's MPI 3.0 i an integration of Moldflow and C-MOLD product development teams and the MPI and C-MOLD 2000 product families into one advanced injection moulding software suite.
Moldflow combines two products on one platform
Moldflow Plastics Xpert (MPX) 3.1 and Shotscope 2.4 software are now integrated to operate on one hardware platform.
Ken Welch, executive vice-president and general manager of Moldflow's Design Analysis Solutions business unit, states: "Succeeding in today's global market depends on continuously increasing efficiency and performance.
This is especially true in the plastics industry, where the widespread use of 3D CAD systems for integrated part and tool design has generated a corresponding shift to CAE analysis technologies that run directly on those 3D models.
The new 3D solver technologies in MPI 6.0 embody the culmination of a major research and development undertaking and employ the latest numerical simulation techniques to break down former speed and capacity barriers for our customers who increasingly rely on MPI/3D solutions to increase output and quality." Gal Sherbelis of GS Design (Rh'anana, Israel), says: "The MPI 6.0 release delivers two significant improvements in the 3D Flow simulation: accuracy and execution time.
Using the new version, I was able to simulate a very specific air entrapment problem in an area where the flow front moved from a thin to a thick section; the trapped air bubbles caused a surface defect.
MPI 6.0 allowed me to understand the cause of the problem and examine a change to the geometry that would fix it.
Plus, the reduction in solver execution time enables me to run more 3D analyses on thin-wall parts, even on models with a large number of elements." Other key features include: * More efficient, panel-based user interface - reorganised display reduces screen clutter and allows more efficient workflow for most tasks with a new Tools panel and Toolbox, consolidated Project and Study Tasks panel, and single log window that consolidates most textual outputs.
Claudio Dall'Acqua, Moldflow analyst at HRSflow (San Polo Di Piave, Italy), says: "The new user interface organization is more rational than ever and allows quicker access to modeling, meshing, and mesh diagnostic and repair functions.
In particular, the new directed diagnostics navigation is very useful.
These improvements have helped speed up my pre-processing work.
Additionally, I have seen improvement in meshing operations, especially in part thickness calculations on our Fusion models." * Improved product integration - Export Part/Runner/Cooling model to CAD via IGES format, improved interfaces to ABAQUS and ANSYS, a new interface to LS-DYNA, plus new capabilities to exchange design-through-manufacturing data between Moldflow Manufacturing Solutions and Design Analysis Solutions products.
The improved integration between MPI and industry standard structural integration programs allows designers of high performance plastic applications to more accurately account for the effects of processing on the performance of injection molded plastics parts when subject to service loading.
Andy Rose of DSM-DADC (Geleen, The Netherlands) uses both Moldflow and LS-DYNA analyses in his work: "The new LS-DYNA interface allows us to output MPI results for subsequent mechanical analysis using LS-DYNA.
This improves our understanding of how injection molded parts will perform under dynamic conditions.
For analysing automotive components, LS-DYNA provides some unique features for dynamic analyses, especially impact and collision (crashworthiness) simulations, which help show achievement of quality and regulatory safety standards.
Now we can account for initial stress and (for fiber-reinforced materials) anisotropic material property distributions to achieve a more accurate prediction of part performance under true operating conditions." * Streamlined diagnostic and communication tools - systematically validate mesh quality with directed diagnostics navigation.
Generate reports in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint formats, in addition to HTML format.
Share information with a distributed design-through-manufacturing team by exporting Moldflow results files and creating comparison criteria files for viewing in the Moldflow Communicator utility.
Alain Cuzel, CAD/CAM Manager at Calor (St-Jean de Bournay, France), says: "The new directed diagnostics navigation tool is a welcome improvement that saves us time in mesh optimisation tasks.
The automatic view adjustment helps us address meshing issues more efficiently." Rotraud Freytag, Manager CAE Unit at Upper Austrian Research (Wels, Austria), says: "As injection molding simulation consultants, we interact with companies in many different industries.
The expanded report generation options and new communication tool implemented in MPI 6.0 make it easier to share analysis results with our project partners or customers quickly, thus enabling them to start necessary optimisation processes much faster." * More informative result displays - isolate warpage due to unbalanced cooling, non-uniform shrinkage and fiber orientation in 3D Warp, view mold internal temperature distributions in 3D Cool, see the plastic re-melt zone in 3D Overmolding, capture changes in the flow front due to jetting in 3D Flow, visualise the Von Mises stresses on the surface of the core in Core Shift, and isolate warpage due to corner effects for Midplane and Fusion Warp analyses.
* Availability - MPI 6.0 is available now.
* About Moldflow Corporation - Moldflow (NASDAQ: MFLO) is the leading global provider of design through manufacturing solutions for the plastics injection molding industry.
Moldflow's products and services allow companies to address part and mold design issues at the earliest stage and maximize productivity and profitability on the manufacturing floor.
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