Let’s Learn Together: Plastic Injection Engineer Role

This post is a continuation in a series about simulation on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and some of the roles you can find there. This week we are focusing on the Plastic Injection Engineer Role and how it brings easy-to-use injection molding simulation directly to the designers of plastic parts.

Overview

Plastic Injection Engineer brings easy-to-use injection molding simulation directly to the designers of plastic parts and injection molds. It simulates how melted plastic flows during the injection molding process to predict manufacturing-related defects on plastic parts. You can quickly evaluate manufacturability while you design, to eliminate costly part redesign, improve part quality, and accelerate time to market. Plastic part designers and product developers can analyze and modify designs at the same time as optimizing for form, fit, and function. Mold tool designers can evaluate and optimize the feed system and cooling circuit designs. Specialist users can link to Structural & Process Apps to tackle advanced workflows.

Minimal simulation knowledge is needed and workflows are made easy through a guided simulation assistant. You can leverage runner and cooling layouts created in CATIA Mold & Tooling Designer Apps or import them from any CAD system. Single-cavity, multi-cavity, and family mold layouts, including sprues, runners, and gates can be analyzed to obtain estimated cycle time, clamp tonnage, and shot size, enabling you to optimize feed system design and avoid costly mold rework. Both hot-, and cold-runner systems can be analyzed and so can valve gates. Users can analyze simple or complex mold cooling line layouts including mold cooling inserts, optimize cooling system design to minimize cycle times and decrease manufacturing costs and optimize part and mold design, material selection, and processing parameters.

Plastic Injection Engineer also supports simulation of advanced molding processes including, Insert Overmolding, Two-shot Injection, Multi-shot Injection, Powder Metal Injection Molding.

Plastic Injection Engineer benefits from Simulation Data Science capabilities enabling all simulation activities, models, and results to be linked, traced, updated, re-used, and analyzed with ease by all impacted users.

Key Capabilities

• Evaluate effectiveness of mold cooling system designs
• Integration with CATIA Mold & Tooling Design for automatic detection of injection locations, cooling systems, injection system, cavities
• Simple, easy to use interface with a guided simulation assistant to minimize the learning curve
• User Role Highlights
• Mold Cooling, Filling, and Packing simulations; Warpage prediction
• Select contributing parts for cavities, injection system, and cooling system
• Access thermo-plastic material, mold material, and mold coolant databases
• Analyze single-cavity, multi-cavity, and family mold layouts, including sprues, runners, and gates
• Analyze mold cooling line layouts
• Import cooling line layouts and runner systems designed in any CAD system
• Estimate cycle time, clamp tonnage, and shot size, to optimize feed system design and avoid costly mold rework
• Run simulations independently using restart

 Benefits

• Virtually test the performance of plastic part and mold tooling designs with an intuitive, guided simulation assistant that minimizes the learning curve
• A single role covers the needs for all industries, all key workflows, and all user personas
• Predict common molding defects including: weld-lines, sink marks, air traps and incomplete filling (short shots)
• Evaluate the effectiveness of mold cooling system designs
• Take advantage of Structural and Process Apps to tackle advanced workflows like non-linear multi-scale material modeling and design of experiments (DOE)
• Simple, easy to use interface with a guided simulation assistant to minimize the learning curve
• Predicts common molding defects including, weld-lines, sink marks, air traps and incomplete filling (short shots)
• Predicts required injection pressures and tool clamping forces, enabling selection of an appropriate injection molding machine
• Simulation made accessible on-premise and on-cloud. Execute simulations, store and manage data on premise, private cloud or DS cloud with support for HPC

 Highlights

• Guided user interface with automated meshing allow for easy setup of analyses
• Simulate filling, packing, mold cooling, and warpage phases of injection-molded plastic products
• Visualize filling animation
• Results for pressure, temperatures, shear rates, shear stresses, and many more critical aspects of the manufacturing process
• Detect weld lines, air traps, and sink marks defects
• Estimate cooling time
• Optimize cycle time
• Select contributing parts for cavities, injection system, and cooling system
• Access thermoplastic, thermoset, mold material, and mold coolant databases
• Access gate location adviser tool to obtain suggestions for gate placements
• Analyze single-cavity, multi-cavity, and family mold layouts, including sprues, runners, and gates
• Analyze hot- and cold-runner systems
• Evaluate valve gated hot-runner systems
• Analyze mold cooling line layouts
• Integration with CATIA Mold & Tooling App to directly access analysis-ready cooling layouts and runner systems
• Import cooling line layouts and runner systems designed in any CAD system
• Estimate cycle time, clamp tonnage, and shot size, to optimize feed system design and avoid costly mold rework
• Simulate filling, packing, warpage, and mold cooling of metallic part inserts (Part Insert Overmolding)
• Evaluate benefits of using localized mold cooling inserts
• Run simulations independently using restart
• Exclude runner and part geometry from warp analysis
• Simulate advanced plastics manufacturing processes, including:
  • Part insert overmolding
  • 2-shot overmolding
  • Multi-shot overmolding
  • Thermoset material molding
  • Powder metal injection molding (PIM)

What’s New

R2021xFD07:

This release features the following updates to the 3DEXPERIENCE Plastics Materials Database:

• 1181 plastics material grades, which previously had constant density values were updated with generic PVT data to greatly improve the accuracy of Fill, Pack, and Warp simulations.
• 41 obsolete grades were removed from the database at the request of the material suppliers that own those grades.

R2021x GA:

• Simulation of Powder Metal Injection Molding You can now simulate the filling and packing phases of products manufactured through the powder metal injection molding process (PIM). PIM, also known as metal injection molding (MIM), is a manufacturing process in which a metal or ceramic in fine powder form is mixed with polymer binder material to form a “feedstock.” The feedstock is then heated to a temperature above the melting point of the binder, which enables you to inject the mixture into a mold to produce highly complex metal products. You can then subject the molded products to secondary operations such as debinding and sintering to remove the binder material and increase the strength of the final product. You can simulate the PIM process to predict weld lines, air traps, fill pattern, and other phenomena typical in metal injection. In addition, metal injection simulations can predict the particle concentration throughout the mold. Particle concentration predictions can help you identify “black lines” defects, which are aesthetically undesirable. Simulations can enable you to evaluate part and mold design changes to minimize or eliminate these defects. The material briefcase DS-InjectionMolding.3dxml does not include any sample metal particle materials, but you can define one of your own. Metal particle injection materials must have the following parameters: Particle diameter and concentration, Specific heat, Thermal conductivity, and Density.
• Simulation of Thermoset Material Injection You can now simulate injection of a thermoset material. The molding of thermoset materials involves the injection of the plastic in a liquid state, typically at room temperature or colder, into a heated mold. The heat from the mold induces a chemical reaction that creates cross-links (permanent connections between molecular chains) through a process known as “curing.” The cured material is very strong, highly resistant to heat and chemicals, and rigid and durable, so thermosets are popular for a wide range of applications. To support simulation of thermoset material injection, the app now includes the following enhancements:
  • Material definition now supports two thermoset-related material properties. You can define Kamal curing behavior, and plastic viscosity now supports the Macosko viscosity model type.
  • When you use a thermoset material, you can now specify whether the app defines the length of the Fill/Pack phase based on the cure percentage of the material or based strictly on time.
  • Additional results plots are available for postprocessing of thermoset injection simulations. You can plot the conversion percentage and the curing time, both at the end of the Fill and at the end of the Pack simulations.

SIMULIA offers an advanced simulation product portfolio, including Abaqus, Isight, fe-safe, Tosca, Simpoe-Mold, SIMPACK, CST Studio Suite, XFlow, PowerFLOW, and more. The SIMULIA Community is the place to find the latest resources for SIMULIA software and to collaborate with other users. The key that unlocks the door of innovative thinking and knowledge building, the SIMULIA Community provides you with the tools you need to expand your knowledge, whenever and wherever.