Design Validation on Special Purpose Machines (SPM)

Design validation is the process of ensuring the quality of Designed product, by conforming to user specifications and requirements. Special Purpose Machine (SPM) designers and Manufacturers produce tailor-made machine tools as dictated by their customers. Validation of these machines fall into two categories - Analytical and Physical.

Analytical methods include Finite Element Analysis (FEA), Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Kinematic Analysis of Mechanisms and Free-Body Diagram. Physical testing include deflection measurements, strain gauging, vibration testing, measuring fluid flow parameters, temperature measurement, accelerated durability testing and frequency response measurements.

Virtual design validation simplifies the Conventional process and requires only a 3d CAD Model to validate product's mechanical resistance, durability, natural frequencies, heat transfer and buckling instabilities.

SPM design Challenges:

• Increased design cycle time
• Increased warranty costs and recall
• Re-design
• Material cost
• Product quality and performance

Design validation on SPM is done to achieve the following :

• Accelerated new product development cycle
• Reduced prototyping costs through Virtual Testing
• Improved product quality and performance
• Ensured reliability and safety standards

• Reduced risk by identifying hotspots in design
• moulding/casting defects identification, weight reduction and load carrying capacity determination
• Vibration reduction in embodiment and other machine modules like pneumatic and hydraulic systems, power packs, etc.,

Design validation benefits:

• Design first time right
  
• Virtual testing at early stage of design process
  
• Reduced time consumption and costly prototyping
  
• Design optimization and alternatives to offset the material cost
  
• Study different alternatives
  
• Performance improvement of complex mechanisms
  
• Drop testing of handheld components
  
• Instant compliance checks for safety
  
• Optimized design for size, weight and efficiency

For more info mail us @ lakshmipriya@egs.co.in

Are you stuck doing repetitive tasks on your product design?

In today's competitive market, every product developer, specifically companies making custom products and high volume manufactures, want to automate their product design instead of doing it right from the scratch to shorten the design cycle time and reduce cost due to manual errors.

SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD provides a fantastic in-built automation tool, DRIVEWORKS XPRESS which helps to automate design task benefiting companies in generating infinite variations of model using rules based project. Set up the rules once and run it again and again to get the automated manufacturing drawing in no matter of time.

 

SOIDWORKS 3D CAD give designers and engineers powerful tools to accelerate the development of design variants and automate repetitive design tasks thereby fastening the design process, saving time and development costs and increases productivity.

 

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Customize Costing Template as per Industry Requirement

Optimise Plastic Part Design in the initial stages of development

Design plastic parts more efficiently and accurately.

Take the complexity out of getting your injection molds right the VERY first time . In a matter of minutes you can test your designs for possible flaws and defects, eliminating rework of expensive molds and reducing costs.

SolidWorks Plastics makes it easy for parts and injection molds. You don’t have to be an expert to easily identify and address companies that design plastic parts or potential defects by making changes to the part or mold design, plastics material, or injection molds to predict and avoid processing parameters, saving resources, time and money.

Manufacturing defects during the earliest stages of design, eliminating costly rework, improving quality, and accelerating time-to- intuitive workflow and design advise to market. Fully integrated with SolidWorks CAD, SolidWorks Plastics works directly on your 3D model, avoiding model conversion issues. You see this intuitive software helps part designers, the impact of design changes right away.

Powerful and fast state of the art meshing covers mold designers and mold makers optimize geometries from thin walled parts to very thick and solid parts. Design for manufacturability without leaving their familiar 3D design experience.

An intuitive interface leads you step by step. Guided analysis, intelligent defaults  and automated processes ensure correct setup, even if you rarely use simulation tools.

The SolidWorks Plastics material database contains thousands of commercial plastics and is fully customizable.

• Part designers get rapid feedback on how modifications to wall thickness, gate locations, materials, or geometry can affect the manufacturing of their part.
• while mold designers can quickly optimize multi-cavity and family mold layouts and feed systems including sprues, runners and gates. Analyse and Optimise a range of geometries including thin walled plastic parts.  
• The Results Adviser provides practical design advice and troubleshooting tips to help diagnose and solve potential problems. This powerful information gives users tremendous insight into the injection molding process, leading to informed design decisions and better quality products. 

While the cost of making changes is low in the early stages of product development, the impact is highest. The sooner you can optimize your plastic parts and injection molds for manufacturability, the better. Design changes in the early stages of product development cost less and have the greatest impact on improving manufacturability. 

The cost of change increases substantially further downstream and can lead to significant time-to-market delays. The challenge in plastics part production is determining how your part or mold design impacts manufacturing and how manufacturing  will impact your design, and then communicating that information early and often throughout the design to manufacturing process. 

SolidWorks Plastics gives you the tools to quickly identify potential problems so you can make changes early in the design process. The most cost effective time to optimize plastic parts for manufacturability is during the initial stages of product design.

Advantages

• Fully embedded in the SolidWorks 3D design environment so you can analyze and modify designs for manufacturability at the same time you optimize for  fit, form and function
• Easy to learn, use and does not require extensive analysis or plastics expertise
• Facilitates design team communication: web-based HTML reports make it fast and easy to communicate simulation results and design advice to all members of the design-to-manufacturing team
• Unbalanced filling in family molds can be predicted and avoided with SolidWorks Plastics.

Click the below image for more idea

For Demo on SolidWorks Plastics, mail us @ lakshmipriya@egs.co.in

Design for Manufacturing and Assembly using SOLIDWORKS

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Assembly (DFA) always has been a challenging proposition when it comes to new product development or cost savings on existing products. At the end of the day, products have to meet the requirements of our end customers.

This presentation is about design for manufacturing and assembly, how we use our CAD tools day-in and day-out, in terms of leveraging on the capabilities of 3D CAD, specifically as addressed by quality requirements. It starts with manufacturing of the individual parts and assembling of the same.

Benefits of DFM and A using SOLIDWORKS

• First time right
• Improved profitability
• Reduced service calls
• Enhance Quality

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Best Design using SOLIDWORKS SIMULATION Standard

Which design works best? How do you know you have the best design?

When it comes to choosing the best design for your project, do you:

• Go with your gut?
• Cross your fingers and hope for the best?
• Methodically test a series of expensive physical prototypes?

Now there is a better way.

Validate your designs before Prototype and manufacture Products, with design validation tools from SolidWorks Simulation. 

 

SolidWorks Simulation Standard is recently introduced by SolidWorks to enable every designer and engineer to simulate and analyze their product performance with fast, easy-to-use CAD-embedded analysis solution. It will also keep your investment low. 

 SolidWorks Simulation Standard can helps you to predict product performance accurately, while your in design stage itself and to speedup your design process, innovate faster, and more confident in the product performance.

SolidWorks Simulation Standard software is used to virtually test your new concepts, develop new designs, and reduce time to market your products. SolidWorks Simulation Standard gives you an intuitive virtual testing environment for linear static Analysis, Kinematic Analysis ( motion ) and fatigue Analysis, so you can answer common engineering challenges with SolidWorks 3D CAD embedded solution.

Problems solved using SolidWorks Simulation Standard:

• Weld Failure Elimination

• Analysis-to-test correlations for strains & Deflections

• Deflection and Stress Calculations for Parts and Assemblies

• Durability & Fatigue Life Prediction

• Life Improvement for Equipments

• Kinematic Simulation of Mechanisms

• Factor of Safety Calculations for load combinations

Benefits:

• Development of Cost-effective Designs that meet Durability Targets
• Elimination of Design Failures due to Service Loads
• Leveraging your existing CAD models
• Improve Process Efficiency and Product Effectiveness
• Increase Innovation and Market Share

Math behind Style Spline in Solidworks

Whether occurring in nature or in the mind of a designer, curves and surfaces that are pleasing to the eye are not necessarily easy to express mathematically. In Solidworks 2014, Solidworks introduced a new entity called Style Spline. I would like to share about mathematical concepts in style spline.

Style spline is something differs from spline which we are using currently, Because Spline curve is a piecewise cubic curve, made of pieces of different cubic curves glued together. Style spline is a Bezier curve. A Bezier curve is one of the parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. But Bezier curves differ from other types of parametric curves by the type of basis polynomials used to form them

The study of these curves was however first developed in 1959 by mathematician Paul de Casteljau using de Casteljau algorithm at Citroën. The idea of this algorithm is plotting the curve through repeated linear interpolation by using given control points (P₀, P₁, P₂, P₃... P_n ). The following discussion will explain how Bezier curve has been derived mathematically. For an example, Lets we discuss about methodology of deriving Quadric Bezier curve (i.e. Parabola).

Generic Linear interpolation formula between two points P₀P₁ is P(u) = (1-u)P₀ + uP₁, for 0 ≤ u ≤ 1

For better understanding, Lets we take "u" = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 ,between the limit 0 to 1

We know that the value of starting (P₀), control (P₁) and ending (P₂) points. Firstly , we have to do linear interpolation between P₀ and P₁ as well as P₁ and P₂ (for u=0.2), so we get P₀₁ and P₀₂ points respectively . And again we have to do linear interpolation between P₀₁ and P₀₂ , finally we will get P(u) point (for u=0.2). So for Quadric Bezier curve, we need three iteration to find the curve points. We have to repeat these three iteration with changing value of "u".

Note: The tangent vector formed by the starting point is tangent to the curve at point (P0). The derived lines from calculations at every stage (like P0P1 ) is tangent to the curve at point P(u). Likewise, Tangency of the curve is controlled.

Lets we see the animation of curve formation in Higher order (4 point) Bezier curve which is created... Click Here

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DFMXpress turn-rules

Are you striving to solve your Quality Issues upfront @ the Design Stage?

SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD provides a 3D workspace which showcases your final results before getting it for production.

As a part of DFMXpress, the analysis tool which helps in upstream validation of difficult areas of manufacturing, following are the set of turn-rules based checks. 

Sequencing with our earlier posts, following are the turn-rules:

TURN RULES

1. MINIMUM CORNER RADII FOR TURNED PARTS

• Avoid sharp inside corners. Provide a generous inside radius to accommodate a tool with a large nose radius, which is less prone to breakage

• A turn-down surface perpendicular to an un-machined (cast) surface might cause burrs

Minimum corner radii for turned parts

2. BORE RELIEF FOR TURNED PARTS:

• Provide tool relief for the bottoms of blind bored holes in turning operations.

Bore relief for turned parts

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DFMXpress Injection Molding Rules

Is your company equipped enough to design your plastic injection mold in an invariable environment?


It may sound hard. But SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software allows us to design plastic injection molds with composite geometries. It provides a 3D workspace which showcases our final results before getting it for production. One can also validate the mechanical functionality of the molds and the components which in turn increases your productivity multi-fold.


SolidWorks can handle various CAD data and provides access to a range of add-on mold design and production applications. Cut down your mold design cycle, import and export various data formats and enhance your design communication with your customers, with the help of SolidWorks 3D CAD.


In continuation with our earlier blog posts, following are the injection molding rules-based checks:

• MINIMUM WALL THICKNESS: Walls which are too thin can cause filling problems and develop high molding stresses and also lead to structural failures and poor insulation characteristics. A minimum wall thickness of 2.0 mm is recommended

• MAXIMUM WALL THICKNESS: Avoid walls which are too thick to prevent cooling problems and defects such as sink marks and internal voids. Thick walls can also increase cycle time
  

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SOLIDWORKS DFMXpress – Mill Rules Overview

Are your manufacturability issues bringing down your profits?

If yes, then look no further. DFMXpress, an integrated feature in SolidWorks is engineered to guide the designer on the problems faced during the manufacturing process. It automates the design process through a set of rules-based checks thereby accelerating and improving the entire design through manufacturability procedure.

In our earlier article we discussed on the drilled hole checks functionality in DFMXpress. In this, we shall explain you in detail on the Mill rules.

MILL RULES

1. DEEP POCKETS AND SLOTS

Deep, narrow slots are difficult to machine. The long, slender end mills required to machine them are prone to chatter, which makes tighter tolerances difficult to achieve. Deep slots also make chip removal more difficult if the slot is blind.

Recommendations:

• Avoid long corners with long radii.
• Design milled areas so that the end mill length-to-diameter ratio is no greater than 3:1.

2. INACCESSIBLE FEATURES

Features should be easily accessible for machining in the required direction. Inaccessible features require special cutters or machining techniques.

3. SHARP INTERNAL CORNERS

Sharp inside corners cannot be achieved with traditional milling and require non-traditional machining processes such as electrical discharge machining (EDM).

Recommendations:

• When designing a three-edge inside corner, one of the inside edges must have the radius of the end mill. A generous corner radius can accommodate a larger milling cutter, which is preferred. Use the radii recommended by fabrication personnel to ensure that tools are easily obtained and maintained.
• If sharp corners cannot be avoided, drill a separate relief hole to allow a male ninety-degree corner to fit. Drill the hole first because drills cannot withstand significant side loading.

4. FILLETS ON OUTSIDE EDGES

For outside corners, chamfers are preferred to fillets. An outside fillet requires a form-relieved cutter and a precise setup, both of which are expensive. Blending of fillets into existing surfaces is expensive to manufacture, even with ball end mill.

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SOLIDWORKS DFMXpress – Drilled Hole Checks Overview

SOLIDWORKS DFMXpress – Drilled Hole Checks Overview

Designing is a crucial stage in a product’s life cycle. It is very important to detect and eliminate errors in the initial stages of design, since these errors will cause problems during manufacturing or increase production costs.

How good will it be, if SOLIDWORKS has an automated manufacturability validation tool?(DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING)

The answer is Yes.

DFMXpress is an analysis tool that validates the manufacturability of parts. It helps in upstream validation of areas, which are difficult and expensive to manufacture. It also provides a mechanism for knowledge captures and employ for continuous betterment.

DFMXpress functionality includes:

• Drilled hole checks
• Milled feature checks
• Turned part checks
• Sheet metal checks
• Standard hole size checks
• Injection molding checks

In order to reduce tooling costs and for efficient manufacturing, there is a set of rules, to be followed, which the above functionalities carry.

Drill rules:

1. Hole diameter-to-depth ratio: For production, small diameter holes (less than 3.0 mm) and high depth-to-diameter ratios (greater than 2.75) are difficult and not recommended. Deeper, blind holes make chip removal difficult

2. Flat bottoms on holes: Blind holes should not be flat bottomed. While reaming, flat-bottomed holes cause problems. Standard twist drills should be used to generate cone-bottomed holes. The bottom angle should conform to the angle on standard drills

3. Perpendicular entry surfaces: The entry and exit surfaces of a drilled hole should be perpendicular to the hole axis. The drill tip might wander if the surface, which the tip contacts is not perpendicular to the drill axis. Exit burrs will be uneven around the circumference of the exit hole, which can make burr removal difficult

4. Holes that intersect internal cavities: Drilled holes should not intersect cavities. During machining, drills follow the path of least resistance when intersecting a cavity. The drill might wander when it reenters the material. If a hole must intersect a cavity, the drill axis should be outside the cavity

5. Partial holes: When a hole intersects a feature edge, at least 75% of the hole area should be within the material. Do not let the axis of the hole intersect an edge of the part or the drill might wander

6. Tolerance checks: Tolerances should be no tighter than necessary. Stringent tolerances might require special process parameters that are not within the natural capability of available machine tools

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GD&T: Empowering Designs using SolidWorks

In today’s scenario, manufacturing industry is facing huge problem in terms of the components getting rejected at their customer’s place. If the rejections take place at the design stage itself, not much money is spent. Rejection happening at the tooled up stage, we end up facing some costs. If the same rejection has to occur at the customer’s place, there is a huge erosion of customer’s trust. If companies are looking for consistent product quality, then GD&T becomes the main stay.

GD&T helps in communicating your dimensional and tolerance requirements to the manufacturing and inspection.

Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) offers many benefits:

·                 Helps in eliminating recreation of drawings

·                 Design intent is clear and precise

·                 You can calculate the worst-case mating limits

·                 Helps you stay competitive with consistent quality

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How to Ensure Your Designs Work?

We do spell check on E-mails.  We do grammar and Syntax check on Reports and Documents.  How about our Designs?  Importance of Design Validation cannot be more relevant than in today's competitive landscape wherein Value Analysis and Value Engineering terminology as become commonplace.

Benefits of Design Validation as a part of the Design Process is emphasized on this Video.

If you like this video please say so.  We invite your comments and feedback on this presentation.