what's new In Moldflow Plastics Advisers 7.0

Suni Lee

what's new
  
Introducing Moldflow Plastics Advisers 7.0
  
By Murali Anna-Reddy, Moldflow Corporation
  
Since its launch in 1997, Moldflow Plastics Advisers[$reg] (MPA[$reg]) design- for-manufacturability software has revolutionized the way that plastics part and mold designers optimize their part and mold designs. Unlike Moldflow Plastics Insight[$reg] (MPI[$reg]) software, which provides a complete suite of modules for simulating the most comprehensive range of manufacturing processes encountered in thermoplastics and thermoset injection molding across a broad range of geometry types, MPA products provide first-pass analysis tools best used in the earliest stages of part and mold design. MPA products have been designed for the "casual analyst," who is typically someone for whom running injection molding simulations is not the primary job, and answer basic questions such as "Will the part fill?" and "Where are the weld lines?" As a result, MPA tools are used extensively by part and mold designers, mold makers, industrial designers, design consultants and even by advanced CAE analysts, who use MPA results to determine which applications require the more in-depth analyses available in MPI modules.
  
Over the years, the capabilities of MPA software have expanded from being able to analyze only the part geometry to being able to analyze complete, multi-cavity mold layouts, including hot or cold runner systems and family molds. The results available from MPA analyses have also grown to include pressures, temperatures, sink marks, cooling quality, and gate location. The new analysis capabilities and results have been added to MPA software over the years in direct response to market feedback, to help our customers decrease time to market, improve the overall quality of their part and mold designs, and ensure that projects are delivered within budgetary constraints. MPA 7.0 is scheduled for commercial release in December 2003.
  
MPA 7.0 contains significant new features and enhancements for increasing user productivity, collaborating with expert users and consultants, and further optimizing part and mold designs. In addition, two new add-on modules are available to extend Moldflow Mold Adviser capabilities with the MPA 7.0 release ?one for investigating the tendency for part warpage and one for evaluating and optimizing mold cooling circuit designs.
  
This article describes in detail new MPA 7.0 features and enhancements, including:  
  
Connect to Consultants Tool ?facilitates communication between the MPA user and a plastics simulation expert/consultant.  
New Optimization Tools ?extends the optimization focus of MPA software through a material/process adviser and a mold runner system adviser.  
Moldflow Mold Adviser Extension Modules ?enables mold designers to evaluate and optimize molded part performance and cooling circuit design.  
Customer Driven Enhancements ?including a material orientation plot and new runner system modeling tools.  
  
Connect to Consultants Tool
  
MPA 7.0 features a utility that facilitates collaboration and monitoring of Moldflow Part Adviser and Moldflow Mold Adviser analysis results by a plastics simulation expert or consultant, usually someone within the user's organization, whom the user specifies. The Connect to Consultants tool will allow the expert/consultant to assist the MPA user with result interpretation, problem troubleshooting, alternative design suggestions, and improving the MPA user's overall comprehension of the software.
  
This powerful tool is simple to set up and operate. To begin with, the user specifies the e-mail address of the expert/consultant inside the software. From this point on, the expert/ consultant can be notified via e-mail when a specific issue arises. The notification can be triggered either manually or automatically. In manual mode, the MPA user initiates the call to the expert/consultant. When doing this, the user can choose to provide the model and/or a report to facilitate the expert/consultant to quickly comprehend the issue and provide a response. In automatic mode, the expert/consultant can set up criteria that will trigger the automatic notification of a problem. The criteria can be specific to the current model or based on historical trends in results. The latter option allows potential problems to be detected even before they arise.
  
The Connect to Consultants tool will nurture a mentoring relationship between the MPA user and the designated expert/consultant in the organization and ensure the successful application of the technology. It can also turn a novice MPA user into a more informed user in the long run.
  
New Optimization Tools
  
Material/Process Adviser
  
Moldflow Part Adviser and Moldflow Mold Adviser users can now optimize the material selection process by evaluating several materials and identifying the material which has the largest processing window and least amount of cooling time for their part design. The user begins by selecting any number of materials, and then launches the Molding Window Analysis. The software compares each material's processing window as well as the maximum and average cooling times of the part. From this comparison, the software ranks the materials in the order of most suitable (largest processing window and shortest cooling time) to least suitable (smallest processing window and longest cooling time).
  
Runner System Adviser
  
   
Mold designers using Moldflow Mold Adviser will benefit from the runner system adviser, which extends the gate optimization tool (introduced in MPA 6.0) to automatically size sprue, runner, and gate components of the runner system. An optimized runner system helps to reduce scrap, improve productivity, and reduce production costs. By automating the runner system design process, mold designers will have one less issue to address regarding their mold design. While designing the runner system, the user can mark portions of (or the entire) runner system for auto-sizing. The program calculates best dimensions for each marked segment of the runner system and automatically updates the model with these calculated dimensions. The designer can review the changes made and obtain feedback on the reason(s) for the change in the dimension(s).
  
Moldflow Mold Adviser Extension Modules
  
Two new add-on modules to Moldflow Mold Adviser are being introduced in MPA 7.0 to extend its capabilities to quickly evaluate and optimize part performance and cooling circuit design.
  
Performance Adviser
  
Packing Analysis
  
A packing analysis can be used to optimize the second stage of the injection molding process to achieve the right balance between part quality, part cost, and cycle time. Users can set up and evaluate packing profiles to determine the optimal packing pressure and duration of packing. From the analysis, the user can review the volumetric shrinkage, cycle time, and the average temperature across the part.
  
Warpage Indicator
  
Undetected, warpage can become an extremely costly problem to fix once a mold is in a production environment. The new MPA 7.0 Warpage Indicator is a traffic-light plot (analogous to the Confidence-of-Fill plot) that highlights the areas where part warpage exceeds a user-specified, acceptable warpage level relative to a user-specified reference plane. Users can investigate further for additional information on the source of warpage and obtain recommendations to fix the problem. Users evaluate whether changes made to the part or mold design or to the material or process conditions will bring the part warpage to within acceptable levels.
  
Cooling Circuit Adviser
  
Cooling Circuit Design and Evaluation
  
   
Mold designers can now quickly design and evaluate their cooling circuit layouts to achieve uniform cooling with a minimum cycle time. Regular cooling channels, baffles, bubblers, and hoses all can be modeled and evaluated. From the analysis, users obtain the part temperature and cooling time. The part temperature plot is useful in identifying hot spots and non-uniform cooling regions. The designer can then consider part and mold changes to address these problems. The cooling time plot is useful in identifying regions which are taking a longer (than average) time to cool, thereby affecting the overall cycle time. In addition, the analysis provides several results related to the cooling circuits, including Reynolds number flow rate, pressure, and temperature, all of which can help the designer to maximize the efficiency of the cooling system.
  
Automatic Cooling Layout Wizard
  
The Cooling Layout Wizard automates the cooling circuit design process by automatically generating an initial cooling system. The wizard utilizes a set of standard rules to generate the location and sizes of the cooling channels. The mold designer can adjust the cooling lines to account for ejector pins and other mold components.
  
Customer-driven Enhancements
  
Several much-requested user enhancement requests will become available in MPA 7.0. These include a material orientation plot and runner system translation tools, among others.
  
Material Skin Orientation Plot
  
   
The Material Skin Orientation plot displays the orientation of polymer molecules and/or fibers (if any) on the skin (surface) of the part at the end of filling. This plot assists in determining a qualitative estimate of the part strength, especially in the vicinity of weld lines. Uniform orientation leads to better surface quality, while differential skin orientation potentially causes differential shrinkage and part warpage. Part and mold designers can evaluate alternative gating strategies to reduce differential orientation.
  
New Runner System Modeling Tools
  
Moldflow Mold Adviser users can take advantage of new modeling tools that allow them to translate, rotate, and mirror portions of the complete runner system. Previously, these tools were limited to part geometry only. These much-requested tools allow mold designers to quickly and efficiently design runner systems, thereby increasing overall productivity.
  
Update on Supported Hardware and CAD Integrations
  
Microsoft Windows NT, which Microsoft officially stopped supporting in June 2003, is no longer a supported operating system for MPA software. The complete list of officially supported hardware platforms and operating systems includes Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Sun Solaris 8 and 9, HP-UX 11.0, SGI IRIX 6.5, and IBM AIX 4.3.3.
  
The MPA CAD-integrated versions have been updated to support the latest product releases from the world's leading CAD companies, including Pro/Engineer Wildfire, SOLIDWORKS 2004, Solid Edge 15.0, Autodesk Inventor 7.0, and Autodesk Mechanical Desktop 7.0.
  
In addition, Moldflow Design Link?4.0 (MDL?4.0) is completely integrated with the Moldflow Plastics Advisers 7.0 release. MDL 4.0 provides a geometry data translation interface between MPA software and leading CAD systems using standard geometry formats such as IGES, STEP, and Parasolid, as well as allowing direct import of native Pro/ENGINEER[$reg] part and CATIA[$reg] V5 part files.
  
Look for the release of MPA 7.0 in December 2003. For more information about Moldflow Plastics Advisers software, go to www.moldflow.com or contact your local Moldflow representative