Simple Solutions That Work! Issue 5

FOUNDRY OF THE NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE 22 SIMPLE SOLUTIONS THAT WORK! Your best bet is to get one seat of the software platform used the most by your customers. This will save time and errors caused by file translations. Your pattern shop is probably already using CAD as well. Adding CAD in house will let you start to collaborate with your pat- ternshop, or even make your own gating design if you have the desire. Forward looking foundry owners havealreadytakenthesesteps.Many of them, like Trident Alloys, have also added the finite element sim- ulation tools like Magmasoft, Finite Solutions, or NovaCast ® . Bringing the simulation tools in-house adds value to your services, and lets you improve your turnaround time, reduce defects, and generally take better advantage of the next generation of foundry employees. Also, as the newweight, shape, and structure optimized parts start to arrive in your inbox, these simu- lation tools will make a difference in the time it takes to create gates, risers, vents, etc. 3D SCANNING, REVERSE ENGINEERING, AND DIGITAL INSPECTION Foundry production has been around, obviously, long before the digital design and additivemanufac- turing revolution. There’s big busi- ness in the replacement parts side of the casting industry, especially for revision tracking. Thesecollaborative tools are being used at OEM’s small and large to accelerate and improve the designquality. Some companies includingJohnDeereandCaterpillar havealsoaddedroutineuseofcasting simulation tools like Magmasoft ® or Finite Solutions ® . These tools help to make sure that complex castings of anycomplexityaredesignedright the first time–eliminating theunneces- sary work of redoing tooling. Even though the companies may have the tools, most of them don’t have the foundry experience to capture the full value of the software. This is where the future-minded foundry comes in. If you don’t have it yet, you should plan on getting CAD in house this year. There is no reason tobe unable to reviewyour customer’sparts in3D on the screen while you are bidding on the job. There are free CAD viewersfromcompanies likeNetfabb/ Autodesk ® . There’s also viewers like Solidworks eDrawings viewer . CAD: COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN AND SIMULATION CAD has gone beyond doing 2D drawing layouts (drafting) on the computer. It’s gone beyond design- ing parts in 3D on the computer, and reducing the labor of reduc- ing those 3D files to 2D drawings. CADprograms likeSolidworks ® now have full suites of software tools that alloweverything fromcalculationof basicproperties likeweight or center of mass, to simulation of structural properties like stiffness. Other soft- ware packages, like OptiStruct ® , or some of the tools from Altair ® let you optimize shape in newways to reducemasswithout losing key per- formance aspects like stiffness. For more information, on the structural optimization work, you can review the article released by Airbus ® and Altair ® here . CADsuiteslikeSolidworks ® ,Inventor ® , and online tools like GrabCAD ® or OnShape ® also help in maintain- ing a full directory of part files, with Will Shambley President - Viridis3D www.viridis3d.com Article Takeaways: 1. Design tools to optimize structural properties in-house 2. 3D scanning to recreate replacement parts 3. Digital manufacturing, from CAD to casting in a day CAD, Simulation, Reverse Engineering, Digital Pattern Making, Robotic Molding Cells, and 3D Scanning