Japanese Team Up on CAE for Plastic Mold Making

TOKYO (FNS)–Four Japanese firms in different industrial sectors–computer systems, plastics, computer-aided design (CAD) and injection molding equipment–have joined to provide computer-aided engineering (CAE) services for quick, low-cost plastic mold manufacturing.

Combined services provided by Toshiba Corp., Toray Industries Inc., Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. and Toshiba Machine Co. Ltd. were said to cover wide-ranging areas from plastic material and mold databases to injection flow simulation and numerical control (n/c) tape cutting.

Masahiko Kohnosu, a chief engineer at Toshiba’s engineering automation software department, said fast turnaround is becoming increasingly important in the manufacturing of plastic molds, and that “small lot, large variety” now is the name of the game.

“It took a year to convince the four companies, all of which are members of the Mitsui group of companies, to join in,” Kohnosu said. Previously, he said, such extensive, inter-industrial cooperation was unheard of, even in the mutually cooperative Mitsui company group.

Toray Industries, which makes 25 percent of its $4.1 billion in annual sales in plastics, contributed to build a database incorporating characteristics of hundreds of plastic materials, including “top-secret” fiberglass-reinforced plastics.

The group’s CAE system, built around a localized version of the Sun-3 workstation by Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, Calif., shows on the 19-inch color display how the flow of a certain plastic material in the injection mold would change under various pressures and how fast it would cool off.

structural Analysis Provided

Kohnosu said that, in addition to the simulation of plastic flow pattern and cooling speed, the CAE system also provides structural analysis of plastic products.

Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, one of Japan’s pioneers in computer-aided design, was said to provide the CAD part of the integrated CAE System, including mold patterns database, mold structural analysis, cavity core design, cooling pipe design, flow path design and injection conditions, such as appropriate injection pressure.

Toshiba Machine, a leading maker of injection mold equipment, provides engineering support from the point of manufacturing technology, according to Kohnosu. He said Toshiba Machine has considerable know-how in the final part of the injection mold process–the injection itself.

Toshiba Corp. would act as the system integrator, offering two types of CAE services–one based on a 32-bit supermini and the other based on Sun Microsystems’ workstation.

He said Toshiba actually used the CAE system to design the plastic molds of a TV chassis.

Viewing Plastic Flow

“You can see in full colors how the plastic would flow into the mold, if undesirable bubbles would form, where cooling would start and how the mold would be affected, step by step,” he said. The Sun Microsystems workstation simultaneously shows a variety of simulation results on the screen, in its multi-window function, he said.

Although he was not certain as to what kind of design efficiencies and cost reduction would be achieved, Kohnosu said, “You can try more plastic materials, more injection patterns and more pressure patterns in the same period of time.”

The CAE system employs the solid modeling method called the “boundary representation method,” which was said to be appropriate to describe cavity patterns inside the mold.

The CAE system based on the workstation cost $33,000 for injection simulation software and $50,000 for mold design software. The minicomputer CAE system was said to cost twice as much.

Kohnosu said as the injection mold equipment carried prices in the $133,000-$200,000 range, its plastic injection mold manufacturing system, including a workstation, should be priced as much. He said efforts were made to lower prices for that end.

“Local users won’t pay more for mold manufacturing system than for injection mold equipment itself,” he said.

The Toshiba group in currently considering plans for U.S. marketing. Kohnosu said Sun Microsystems, which supplies the workstation to Toshiba, might want to include the CAE system as part of its third-party software offerings in the U.S.

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