introduction to autodesk inventor tooling · pdf filema111-1 introduction to autodesk inventor...

Introduction to Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite John Callen – Autodesk, Inc Shibai Bagchi – Autodesk, Inc

MA111-1 The manufacturing of plastic injection molded designs requires specialized machinery that entails its own design process. Speaking the native language of mold base designers, Mold Design in Autodesk Inventor® Tooling is a specialized application that takes you through the entire process of mold base design—from core, cavity, and side-core creation, to runner and cooling channel design, to mold base selection and customization, and finally to drawing creation. In this class, we will take you through the entire process, illustrating how you can accelerate the creation of your molds and respond quickly to product design changes.

About the Speaker: John Callen has been in the CAD/CAM field for over 25 years. Most recently, he headed up the marketing organization for Gibbs and Associates, creators of GibbsCAM®; and a partner of Autodesk. Prior to that he headed up the Product Management Group at CAMAX, and was the SmartCAM®; Application Development Manager for Point Control, another Autodesk partner. John had also previously held a position at Autodesk as the Product Marketing Manager for Interoperability. John has been a key contributor in a number of next generation manufacturing technology initiatives, such as STEP-NC, Smart Machine Platform Initiative (SMPI), Open Modular Architecture Controller (OMAC), and most recently, MTConnect.

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MA111-1 Introduction to Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite

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LEAVE PAGE TWO INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK


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Contents Audience Survey ........................................................................................................................ 4The Dilemma ............................................................................................................................. 5CIM’s Objective .......................................................................................................................... 6Mold Design Through-put ........................................................................................................... 8User Expertise/Efficiency ..........................................................................................................10Mold Design Documentation .....................................................................................................12Autodesk Inventor Tooling Overview .........................................................................................14A Single Digital Model ...............................................................................................................15Inventor Tooling – Key Value ....................................................................................................16Standard Mold Design Flow ......................................................................................................17Autodesk Inventor Tooling Design Concepts .............................................................................18Inventor Tooling 2009 ...............................................................................................................19Customer Feedback ..................................................................................................................20Demonstration ...........................................................................................................................21Further Follow-up ......................................................................................................................22


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Audience Survey

The industry research that we have done to date clearly delineates various roles relative to the development of plastic products. There is the industrial designer, the mechanical designer, and the tooling designer. Some companies focus on the design of the product and outsource the development of the tooling. Other companies provide a mold design service to companies that design plastic products. And there are some companies that encompass the entire art-to-part spread.

Today, Autodesk products are already being used to design plastic injection molds. Autodesk Inventor with its powerful 3D modeling capabilities is usually used to create the core and cavity of the mold, while AutoCAD is used to design the mold base. Sometimes, the core and cavity design can be developed by another CAD modeling system and the mold base design is developed around it.


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The Dilemma

In manufacturing there is an old adage that says “80% of the cost to manufacture a product is determined by decisions made during the design process without any understanding of the implications to manufacturing.”

From a manufacturing perspective you can create NC programs faster or even cut your part faster, but in reality all you are addressing is a portion of the 20% cost to manufacture the part. The bulk of the cost, the 80%, remains untouched because this percentage is directly related to design activity. Creating NC programs or cutting metal do not impact design.

In order to significantly impact the cost to produce something, the 80% needs to be addressed. In order to address the 80%, the manufacturing implications of design decisions needs to be provided to the user who is making those design decisions. In the past, companies have tried to do this through design/build teams or quality circles and these practices are still used today. There is a significant opportunity to provide software tools which facilitate concurrent product and process design.


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CIM’s Objective

Autodesk’s Computer-Integrated Manufacturing group has been established to develop applications which address three questions:

• Can my design be manufactured?

• How can my design be manufactured?

• What is the most efficient way to manufacture my design?

By providing applications in this space further extending Digital Prototyping into Manufacturing, Autodesk begins to address the untouched 80% and will significantly impact the cost to produce products.


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The first CIM product being offered by Autodesk is the Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite. Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite.

Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite gives designers and engineers intelligent tools and mold base catalogs to quickly and accurately generate mold designs directly from the digital prototype. The Inventor model is an accurate 3D digital prototype that helps mold, tool & die manufacturers validate the form, fit, and function of mold design before it is built. Sharing a single digital model allows engineering teams to design products while manufacturing teams concurrently design the associated molds avoiding costly manufacturing errors and significantly shortening delivery times.

Let’s look at some of the key problems faced by mold designers, possible ways they can be addressed, and how Autodesk Inventor Tooling addresses them.


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Mold Design Through-put

In today’s international market, mold designers are faced with competitive pressures to produce more quickly and more accurately just to stay in business. Offshore competition with its reduced labor costs has captured more and more mold business requiring companies to identify ways to remain competitive.

Because of this environment, one of the key problems driving mold manufacturers is the ability to quickly and accurately design molds. Ideally, this system would work directly from Inventor’s 3D digital models of the plastic parts, ensuring the highest level of information fidelity. To ensure productivity, the system should provide some level of guidance through the mold design process as well as automating tedious, complex tasks, such as patching openings and generating runoff/shutoff surface generation.

Of course, product designs are rarely static, so the solution should also be able to readily accommodate incremental changes to the part design automating the update to the mold design to be consistent with the updated part geometry.


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Autodesk Inventor Tooling addresses the need to quickly and accurately develop mold designs by providing an extensive set of easy-to-use mold design features that work directly from Inventor 3D models of plastic parts. It guides you through the entire mold process, from orienting the part and defining the mold separation direction, to creating the core and cavity, to defining the material feed and cooling circuits, mold base assembly creation including injectors, lifters and locks, to creating engineering drawings. The system automates a number of complex operations, such as patching openings, generating runoff/shutoff surfaces, and creating core and cavity halves.

By maintaining associativity with the Inventor digital model, Autodesk Inventor Tooling addresses the need to minimize the impact whenever the part design incrementally changes. The system’s functionality also supports updating the mold design based on changes to the part model. This helps to ensure that the mold base design is consistent with the current part geometry.


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User Expertise/Efficiency

Traditionally, much of the quality of a mold design is directly attributed to the skill of the mold designer. Experienced mold designers are as much craftsmen as they are engineers. But the experience level of the work force is at risk as it continues to age and goes into retirement.

In response to a varying level of experience, the system should present the user with an intuitive workflow that is familiar to the experienced mold designer while at the same time provide guidance to the novice user. Encoded mold design expertise can further augment the user.

Beyond the level of inherent expertise of the user, how the user spends their time also greatly affects their efficiency. A vast percentage of a mold design consists of standard mold base assemblies and components. Providing a library of standard mold base components allows the user to reference parts rather than having to spend time modeling them. The mold base design would end up being a blend of part specific cavities and cores with standard mold base components.

If the standard components contained in the library actually corresponded to the catalogs of mold base and mold component vendors, then creating an actual BOM which could be directly ordered from is straight forward.


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Users of varying levels of mold design expertise and experience will find Autodesk Inventor Tooling’s intuitive mold design workflow easy to follow as it guides them through the mold design process. Experienced users will find familiarity in the work flow. Less experienced or casual users have an additional level of support with the mold design wizard, which steps them through the mold design process step by step. Whether experienced or novice, or anywhere in between Autodesk Inventor Tooling provides a productive design environment.

The extensive library of mold bases and components included with Autodesk Inventor Tooling allow standard components, which are commonly used in molds, to be included during design. The systems leverages intelligence built into the library components to automatically incorporate them into the mold design saving valuable time.


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Mold Design Documentation

Once the mold design is finished, the final step is to create a complete collection of engineering drawings which are used to document the mold for manufacturing. In regions where labor is inexpensive, the core and cavity design is usually done using a 3D modeling system due to the geometric complexity, but the remainder of the mold is designed using a 2D system, such as AutoCAD, since the geometry is much simpler. This 2D material performs a double role in completing the mold design while also being the documentation for the mold. Unfortunately, working in 2D introduces a wide variety of opportunities for errors.

Ideally, the system should allow you to do the mold design in 3D for both complex core and cavity geometry and the more simple geometry of the mold base and then the various drawing views would be generated directly from the 3D model. Deriving the model views directly from the 3D model should ensure that they are accurate and consistent with the mold design.

In addition, if the engineering drawings are generated from the 3D model of the mold, the bill of materials (BOM) for the mold should also be readily generated. If standard mold bases or components are used in the mold, including their vendor part numbers should also be possible.

Finally, if the mold design is updated the engineering documentation should be easily updated.


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Creating accurate and complete sets of engineering drawings for a mold base is often tedious and an opportunity for introducing errors. Autodesk Inventor Tooling addresses the need to create corresponding documentation of the mold base design by automatically generating the various drawing views required for each sheet directly from the 3D digital model of the mold. Similarly, the bill of material for the mold can also be directly derived from the Inventor model. This ensures that the documents are accurate and are consistent with the mold design.

If the mold design changes, because the engineering drawings are associated with the 3D digital model of the mold, they can be readily updated to reflect the latest version of the mold.


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Autodesk Inventor Tooling Overview

When designing a mold, Autodesk Inventor Tooling works directly from the digital prototype maintaining a high level of accuracy. Full associativity to the Inventor digital prototype allows any changes that are made to the part model to be automatically reflected in the mold design helping to ensure that the mold base design is consistent with the new part geometry. Together, this allows the whole mold design process to be accelerated while maintaining quality.

Autodesk Inventor Tooling guides you through the mold design process and automates a number of complex operations, such as patching openings and creating runoff/shutoff surfaces. The system provides an extensive library of mold bases and components from vendors which are in use worldwide. Using parts from the library, molds can be produced more efficiently and cost effective.

The result is higher quality products and faster time to market.


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A Single Digital Model

A single digital model is a real advantage of Autodesk Inventor Tooling. Using a single digital model as the core for both design engineering and manufacturing engineering allows the concurrent design of products and tooling. Costly manufacturing errors, which commonly exist in disjointed design and manufacturing systems, are avoided by using this approach. Working from a single representation ensures that every aspect of the product development process has access to the current product information even when changes occur. And working from a single digital model shortens the overall time to deliver the product while maintaining quality.


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Inventor Tooling – Key Value

Autodesk Inventor Tooling has a number of key values that differentiate it from other mold design systems. First and foremost, the system’s design has focused on ease of use. Intuitive mold design workflows have been incorporated into the system providing a familiar environment for experts, while supporting the novice or casual user. Certain aspects of the process have been automated, providing powerful capabilities which augment the user’s efficiency.

By guiding the user through the mold design process, Autodesk Inventor Tooling provides a framework that makes sure that the different aspects of the design are covered. Built-in engineering expertise expedites the mold design process, saving critical time.

Finally, numerous features have been included in Autodesk Inventor Tooling to allow the user to realize high levels of productivity and flexibility further reducing the time to develop0 a mold design while improving the overall quality of the mold design. Libraries provide intelligent components and mold bases allowing the system to readily incorporate them into the mold design. Associativity between all aspects of the mold design allows the system to incrementally update affected components when changes are introduced into the design.


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Standard Mold Design Flow

Autodesk Inventor Tooling has implemented the following standard mold design flow:

Place Part Define Workpiece Settings Create Parting Design Design Side Core(s) Define Layout Create Feeding System Create Cooling System Specify Mold Components Trim Model Generate 2D Drawings

This workflow is both familiar and intuitive to experienced mold designs. The system’s implementation of it allows inexperience users to be able to step their way through a complete mold design with little difficulty.


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Autodesk Inventor Tooling Design Concepts

When Autodesk Inventor Tooling was designed, there were a number of key design concepts that were followed to produce an easy to use, yet comprehensive mold design application.

As part of the Inventor family, Autodesk Inventor Tooling extends the existing Inventor methodology so learning how to use it is very straight forward for an Autodesk Inventor user.

Rather than providing a collection of disjointed functions, the system presents a sequence of operations to the user. A user who is an experienced mold designer will find the step-by-step order very familiar, while the first time or casual user will find it very easy to follow.

Mold design is not a single push-button application. Even so, a number of tasks, which are extremely tedious for the user, can be solved by the system. In these situations, these were automated allowing the user to deal with other design decisions.

Most mold designs leverage existing commercial off the shelf components and mold bases from suppliers. Standard components and mold bases significantly reduces the time to manufacture a mold. Similarly, libraries of components and mold bases allow the user to reference rather than model these components saving valuable design time.


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Inventor Tooling 2009

Autodesk Inventor Tooling provides a number of automations to improve the user’s overall efficiency and reduce the time to create a mold design. These automations leverage Inventor’s powerful and robust geometric modeling functionality. Some make use of the extensive component and mold base libraries. All take advantage of the digital model that is the system’s core.

Some mold design tasks require an amount of user interaction. Special interfaces have been developed for these operations further assisting the user.


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Customer Feedback

Autodesk Inventor Tooling has been introduced in China and Latin America where customers are using it to design molds which are being used in production. Though customer feedback covers a variety of different aspects of the product, many of them comment of the product’s ability to reduce the overall time to develop a highly accurate mold design. This is testament to the product’s commitment to ease of use and the benefit of being based off a single digital model.

Autodesk Inventor Tooling provides a comprehensive mold design solution which extends Autodesk’s Digital Prototyping initiative further into manufacturing.


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Demonstration

At this point in the presentation, Shibai Bagchi, Technical Product Manager, will perform a complete demonstration of Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite 2009. In this demonstration, he will show how the software takes an Inventor plastic part model and develops a complete plastic injection mold design. Key aspects that will be highlighted are the various automatic capabilities, such as patching openings in the part model, part line generation, core and cavity creation, gate, runner and sprue design, and incorporating a standard mold base design from a library of popular vendors.


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Summary Autodesk Inventor Tooling Suite gives designers and engineers intelligent tools and mold base catalogs to quickly and accurately generate mold designs directly from the digital prototype. The Inventor model is an accurate 3D digital prototype that helps mold, tool & die manufacturers validate the form, fit, and function of mold design before it is built. Sharing a single digital model allows engineering teams to design products while manufacturing teams concurrently design the associated molds avoiding costly manufacturing errors and significantly shortening delivery times.

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