Material Properties 1

[damnsam]

Hi Y'all,

I am currently investigating plastic molded parts in Solidworks 2005. I need to know max and min wall thicknesses in a molded plastic part. I've tried measuring mass properties, but I don't get any usefull information from that. Is there a way that Solidworks can measure wall thickness, without having me to take multiple (too many!) sections and manually measure an infinate amount of points?

Thanks,

Damnsam

 

[Heckler]

Damnsam,

As with any design comes a certain amount of "investigation" and design validation. I would suggest working with your mold maker, injection house and material supplier to nail down the specifics. Just because you solid model has constant wall thickness means nothing if the manufacturing and material issues are not addressed. Try this thread for some information....thread559-95248

I'm in the middle of doing some molds and SLA....it's an iterative process and can be costly if issues are not addressed.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 3.1 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
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"There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea" Bernard-Paul Heroux

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

There is no automatic max/min wall thickness measuring feature in SW. (That I know of) Probably many/most of the walls will have a draft on them anyway, so a face to face measurement will result in an angle.

What format is the file in? If it is native SW (.sldprt) & has sketches & features, the quickest way would be to double click on those & view the dimensions used.
If the part does not have dimensioned sketches, you may have to create them (using cross-sections & converted entities) and then (possibly) auto-dimension.

Just curious though ... why do you need the max/min thicknesses?


Making the best use of this Forum. faq559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions. faq559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of. faq559-520

 

[damnsam]

Thanks guys,

I've heard of a program called "Mold flow" that will do what I want, but I haven't investigated it yet. I work for a company that makes injection molded plastic furniture. I have recieved a .sldprt from a part designer and I need to determine if there are any "pockets" of too little or to much material for mold tooling purposes.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Damnsam
Mechanical/Process engineer
U.S. Leisure

 

[Solidmold]

Damnsam, you can check the wall thickness with SolidWorks Utilities. You enter a target thickness and you'll get a nicely gradient painted part from min to max thickness. When passing with the cursor over the part you get the thickness on that point. Check it out! If you don't have Office, I think you can gat a 30 days evaluation of Utilties. Ask your VAR for it.

SolidMold

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

That's a useful feature. Thanks Solidmold.


Making the best use of this Forum. faq559-716
How to get answers to your SW questions. faq559-1091
Helpful SW websites every user should be aware of. faq559-520

 

[damnsam]

Thanks Solidmodel. Great tip!

Damnsam