CAD System For The Conceptual Design Of Injection Mold Based On UG

Plastic molds are widely used among industries of autos, household appliances, instruments and toys. There are two stages in the design process of injection mold: conceptual design and detailed design. In the conceptual design, designers are required to consider, express, judge and plan the design scheme based on the fully understanding of the design requirement. It is the most creative and influential stage in the whole design process. It is difficult for current 3D CAD software to support the conceptual design, and many mold producers just adopt the mixed mode-conceptual design for 2D and detailed design for 3D to cater need for the rapid design. In order to realize the rapid 3D design and the integration of injection mold conceptual design and detailed design, a professional CAD system for the conceptual design of plastic mold is needed (short for CACD system).Based on the structure feature and design flow of injection mold, a method for conceptual design on UG, a 3D design platform, is proposed here. By bringing the idea of Concurrent Engineering into the structure of design flow and adopting the top-down flow of mold design and assembly model, the conceptual design elements for all parts are summarized according to the typical structure feature of injection mold, and parametric model library based on general module features are built. With this, the modeling of conceptual design for cavity/core,gating system,insert,slider/lifter,mold base,cooling system and ejector system can be finished, and these models are heritable, which are connected to the detail design process. A method for configuration files based on unified naming rules was presented, with which users can define their own component type and pattern to make the interference check on the assembly model in conceptual design.Based on the above studies, the injection mold CACD system on UG has been developed. This system can aid the designers to finish the assembly graph for injection mold rapidly, express the total scheme and the type and size of main parts. By analyzing the results of interference check, the designers can modify the design scheme, which provides safeguard for correctness of injection mold design. The application of this system can guide the mold producers to optimize their design mode and also increase the efficiency and quality of mold design.