First of all, does Solid Works have a "mold flow" add-on? If so, does anyone have any experience with it?
SolidWorks has a product called SolidWorks Plastics - it is exactly for injection molding simulations. I have some experience. What's your task?
I don't mean to hijack this thread, but do you know when they introduced SolidWorks Plastics? I have SW2010, and so far haven't been able to find anything.
Plastics was made available with version 2013. It is additional product - just like Simulation or Flow.
I have just joined an injection molding company as an engineering consultant and I will need to design parts for customers that do not have the engineering support for their desin effort. I was going to purchase Solid Works Plastics but I needed to hear someone's opinion about it first.
Disclaimer: I don't have any experience with SolidWorks Plastics. That said, I've used the SolidWorks Simulation structural finite analysis tools. Pro's were that it was easy and fast to use. Con's were that it didn't have the flexibility that I was used to from my experience with Ansys. I got frustrated setting up the boundary conditions the way I needed, and the meshing options were limited. Through my job I saw the results of some Moldflow simulaitons. It seemed like they had exquisite control of processing conditions. For our simulation, we used a couple types of polypropylene, changed gating locations, injection time, packing profile, simulated cooling lines, and changed the thermal conductivity of the mold. From the output of the analysis, we got the packing pressure that would be required from the press and any sinking and shrinkage/warp that occurred. So here's the analogy I would pose: SolidWorks Simulation is to Ansys as SolidWorks Plastics is to Autodesk Moldflow. SolidWorks Plastics will probably provide a starting point, but I doubt it's the end-all-be-all for plastic injection simulation. If it serves the purpose for a year or two, it will probably have been worth the investment. With that, over to the people with actual experience.
Thanks Kevin... It sounds like SW Plastics will do just fine for my initial applications. The next step is a little more complex...getting the go ahead for the purchase of the package.
Hello Wiley: we are use Mold flow analysis all the mould, and it's OK, it can be forcast many injection problem.
I have used Mold Flow in the past and it is a very useful, and in my applications accurate, tool for projecting mold seams. I was with a company designing and irregular shaped annular tank that was required to pass a 150 psi pressure/burst test. During the design phase we constructed a mold flow simulation and later found that it projected where the mold fronts would meet. We found that those "cold fronts" were our weakest point in the surface under pressure. It requires a very accurate model, and in my case I actually modeled the fill points, which was instrumental in the accuracy of the simulation. I felt it was very easy to use, and fairly intuitive.
