Why perform moldflow analysis of simple parts or parts that have a tooling history
There are many simple parts that may not need any gate location analysis and can be molded based on past history or known gate locations. Yes, you will be able to mold these parts, but you may also miss an opportunity to possibly make an improvement in product design, saving runners scrap, material or processing savings, optimization of design, tooling/molding, and reduce cycle time. Since plastic materials are still evolving and newer materials offer many ways to save costs and improve design, part quality, and different options of radical design changes can combine multiple parts or applications into one tool. If you have not looked at any of your older typical parts/applications, it is best to review all that before you build your next tool.
Parts that are not changing product design, but need new tooling
Sometimes, you may not be able to locate the exact gate location to have a completely balanced fill all around the part and cavities. These slight imbalances of 5-10% can be enough to for longer cycle time, cooling, packing issues, scrap rates, surface quality, gate or flow lines, surface finish, processing window, clamp tonnage. You may be able to save 2-50 % in cooling time/cycle time with design/material modifications. In today's competitive market, this may be enough to lose on the next project. Remember upfront review and analysis cost is one time item, but savings and improvements last over the product life cycle. When you perform analysis from an expert source like Ideal Tech, Inc., you not only will be able to avoid such issues but may also find new ideas or use newer techniques to combine parts or use newer materials.
Parts that are going through some design modifications
Many molders have gone through series of manufacturing problems when parts are modified some ribs, added features/structure, added plastics, removed plastics and engineering changes in design, tooling, materials, and processing. Old method of experience may work for many, but they miss the opportunities to optimize the part, tooling and process, eliminating trial and error costly methods and possibility of reduction in overall project costs. It is worthwhile to spend few hundreds or few thousands in one time cost in order to optmize your products with Ideal Tech Engineering services and possibly save thousands of dollars in tooling/molding.
Why perform moldflow analysis of new parts
Performing mold filling analysis of a new part is definitely helpful. Many would agree that any new part design should be checked with fill, pack, cooling, shrink, and warpage analysis coupled with finite element analysis if you are looking to optimize your design, tooling, process, and assembly. However, only experienced expert engineering source can offer the most value and solutions. Any one who knows how to use CAE software is not an expert. Years of product expertise of diverse industries, higher educational background in plastics, and tooling/molding experience matter to find the right solution for the best value. Many CAE sources do not possess the right expertise, experience, and may offer only limited type of service. You may very well spend high upfront costs, but may never realize any real benefit of of using the right source. It is simpler to provide results to fill the part by doing a quick analysis or detailed 3D analysis, but you may never know if it is the optimal solution unless you use the right source. You may get parts, but you may experience problems with warpage, higher cycle time, processing issues, production inconsistencies, engineering change costs, tooling problems, product failures, weld line problems, stress failure, short product life, poor material choices, poor processing set up and much more. These sorts of problems may never occur if you have the right source who can immediately identify these problems upfront and provide the right solution no matter how many iterations it takes to provide the optimal solution. Ideal Tech is the only source that can provide a complete reivew and understanding of all possible issues to you when you choose any of the engineering services. This will help you avoid higher costs throughout the product life cycle. Ideal Tech has the expertise to support you for design, engineering, FEA, process simulation, tooling, processing, problem solving and project management. Check out our website for additional information on benefits of mold filling analysis, types of analysis, processing problems and other details.
Overall Management Perspective on upfront engineering costs
Many project engineers, program managers, plant managers or higher managment of typical custom molding facility are always cautious of additional costs for their typical applications. Few hundreds or few thousands of upfront engineering cost is still met with some resistance even if there is a long term benefit because it is not simple to quantify the benefit of advanced engineering. Very few companies think of advanced engineering techniques such as moldflow, FEA, process simulation as a possible option to eliminates many of daily problems at the plant level. Robust advanced engineering and optimization of your design, tooling, and processing can certainly eliminate many plant level manufacturing issues. It can be the most value added solution to get a consistent quality product. When you do upfront engineering of each part, it can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in overall costs. However, when you start having issues with parts, processing, assemblies, production, the whole corporation starts to pay for higher operational costs. CEO/executive management is then willing to pay hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to solve the problem. Some companies even go through sudden cost cutting methods or pay outside management consultants to tell them to how to reduce work force, cut costs, reduce engineering or else. However, any good company never walks away from upfront robust and advanced engineering tools to optimize their each and every product. Those companies that use upfront advanced engineering techniques to control their product development and manufacturing costs are always very efficient in their operations, have better profit margins, have the highest quality products, and have the highest customer satisfaction. Cost savings through cost cuttings or HR elimination shows up on instantaneous improvement in profits for short term, but does not solve the long term problem. Upfront robust engineering and advanced engineering not only eliminates many design, tooling and processing issues, but also offers savings through less engineering changes, costs savings through optimization of material, design, tooling, processing, and manfucaturing costs. On the other hand, if you use any source that offers simply cheap pricing, then you may be adding more costs to your existing operations and dig a deeper hole. It is as much more important to select the right source. Gold or silver Certified moldflow consultants are tested for software use, but not for their experience in design, tooling, or molding, educational qualifications, industry experience, or innovative solutions abilities. Gold certified sources does not mean you get the best value from those sources. It is very important to check overall experience, expertise, educational background as well full capability for all engineering services. Furthermore your source should be able to fully understand all aspects of design, functional requirements, product testing, assembly, manufacturing, finite element analysis, material choices, process choices, and a complete expert in the field.
