Webinars on "Automated DFM Reviews for Sheetmetal"

One cannot stress enough the importance of reviewing a design before it moves ahead in the development and production cycle. The cost of correcting a defect gets multiplied with every progress made in the physical creation of a product. There are many simple guidelines for sheetmetal designs which can help save time and money spent in rework and scrap associated with manufacturing defects.
Attend the webinar on "Automated DFM Reviews for Sheetmetal" to learn how......
http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com/dfm.aspx

DFM Review Automation....

Why should you go for it?
The DFM review is a defined process in many organizations. Many have derived benefits in terms of reduced time-to-market, lesser waste and less of rework. But how do you improve upon this process? Automate! Deploy a tool which which does the mundane checks for you leaving you free to concentrate on more value added stuff.

How should you go about it?
First of all, choose the right software. Look for software which is easy to use and learn and integrates well with your CAD tool. Look for continuous improvements in the DFM review process.

How do you stand to gain?
Read more at
http://www10.mcadcafe.com/link/display_detail.php?link_id=27994
( you will need to register for free for accessing the article)

Knowledge Retention using DFMPro

Robin, Operations Manager at one of the most productive sites of Rapid Productions Limited, was looking one year ahead. The last year was a breeze. Once again, his operations were the toast of the company. But he knew that the next year was going to be a challenge and he also knew why. One of the reasons of the success of his operations was the experience of the design and manufacturing departments. Many of the engineers has spent their lifetime at Rapid Productions and were thoroughly aware of the design to manufacturing requirements. There were design engineers, who were aware of manufacturability aspects and there were manufacturing engineers who knew why a design was created in the way it was. But the problem Robin had was that many of these engineers were nearing retirement. As a matter of fact, 2-3 of them were retiring next year. Robin knew that much of the high productivity of the operations could be attributed to the limited number design-manufacturing iteration they had. Robin could easily identify that this was an important factor based on his past experience and he knew that he needed to do something about it. The design engineers were very aware of the manufacturing capabilities of the organization and especially of that site and ensure that their design took these “design for manufacturing” aspects into account. They were not only good at design but also understood the manufacturing implications. Additionally, the experience of the manufacturing engineers was also at hand. Robin understood that with these engineers leaving a lot of the knowledge they had acquired over the years would be lost. This would definitely affect the productivity of the site operations. New engineers joining the organization would take time in understanding the organization specific guidelines. He needed some mechanism to capture the available knowledge and reuse it. Though he knew that he would not be able to capture all 100% DFM knowledge, he wanted to try to setup a system using which they could create a knowledge management framework for DFM.

His search led him to DFMPro, software for automating DFM reviews with a rich set of APIs using which the software could be customized to handle organization specific DFM guidelines as well. Robin set up a task force comprising a few of the experienced design and manufacturing engineers. He also got the help of the customization services of Geometric, the company which developed DFMPro. The task force was assigned a project for a duration of 3 months in which they planned to capture the most important DFM guidelines in the form of customized DFMPro rules. One important feature of DFMPro was that it was integrated within the CAD environment so the rules could be checked during the design stage and corrected if required. Additionally, it also provided batch mode of operation with report generation using which multiple designs could be processed overnight and the generated reports could be viewed offline.

The task force set about religiously capturing the various scenarios, lessons learnt and knowledge gained over so many years in the form of rules embedded within DFMPro. Though some rules had to be noted only in the form of documents or checklists, many of the critical rules of thumb and manufacturing guidelines were successfully transferred to the software. Within a month or so, they had made significant progress. Robin decided to try out the system as a prototype for a few newly recruited design engineers. He was recently facing complaints from the manufacturing department about their lack of manufacturing knowledge. So, he decided to evaluate the newly developed automated DFM review system with the help of these guys. He observed that within a few days after deploying the new system, the design change requests sent by manufacturing showed a decline. Within a few more months, the complete system was in place. The retiring engineers monitored the performance of the system and contributed their knowledge to make it a success. The operation reviews showed that things were improved and the productivity of the new engineers was improving. Robin was happy with the results. Now that he had installed the system in place, he could face the productivity targets of the forthcoming year without any worries.

To know more about the ways in which you can benefit from DFMPro, write to dfmpro.marketing@geometricglobal.com

Visit http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com for additional information

Reduced quotes using changes suggested by DFMPro can help manufacturers bag more business

Jimmy works in a manufacturing firm, OnTrack, which delivers machined, turned and fabricated components based on requirements from its clients. The firm operates in a very competitive environment where they have to bid for the manufacturing contracts from clients and compete with at least ten to twelve other firms to win a bid. Generally, the vendors are on equal ground on quality so the winner is generally decided based on cost. OnTrack was struggling to survive since, given the current levels of resources they had, costs could not be reduced further. They had to innovate to survive in this cut throat market. Jimmy was given the job of coming up with ideas and solutions for this tough situation.

Jimmy researched in the market and came across DFMPro, an automated tool that supports several common Design for Manufacturing guidelines for machining and fabrication which helps to produce parts economically with better quality, shorter time and readily available machining tools. Jimmy realized that by employing DFMPro, they could come up with design suggestions which could reduce the manufacturing cost.

For example, in some designs, machined pockets were designed to have sharp corners whereas they were not important from a functional standpoint. Similarly, many designers had a habit of chamfering or filleting all parts edges which again was unnecessary and resulted in increased cost. In many cases, hole diameters were different from standard available tool sizes. For large runs, tool and setup customization may be acceptable but it would drastically affect the cost for short runs.

Such design modifications for ease of manufacturing could be suggested to the client. These could reduce not only the cost of manufacturing but also the time required for delivery. If the customer was ok with these changes, OnTrack could submit a reduced bid and thus possibly get the contract. Jimmy got an evaluation version of DFMPro for SolidWorks and employed these techniques for a few bids and to his surprise, he got a positive response from the client. The prospect readily agreed with the suggested changes when he was informed of the impact those changes on the cost. Not only did OnTrack win the bid, but was named a preferred vendor for future bids. OnTrack was back on track to improving profits thanks to Jimmy and DFMPro.

Disclaimer: All names and characters mentioned in the stories are fictitious. Any resemblance with real characters/ entities should be considered as mere coincidence.

Reduce design change costs using DFMPro

Harvey, a Senior Engineer with First Choice Electronics, is faced with a tough problem. First Choice produces electronic goods like notebooks, LCD(s) and cell phones. These products have very short life spans. The company needs to innovate and bring new ideas to the market rapidly. Consequently, its design to manufacturing cycle has to be as small as possible. Any lapses or rework lengthens the time to market and the competition noses ahead. So, First Choice has always tried to avoid any design changes which could affect the time to market. However, invariably they have faced design change issues due to various reasons over the years. These changes also increase the cost of producing the product by around 25%. Thankfully, their competitors face the same issues. Hence, this issue has not become a bottleneck.

This year, the global economy faced a recession. World wide, companies experienced dips in sales. Many companies started laying off some of their workforce to reduce cost. First Choice, however, had other plans. They valued their people and decided to take actions to reduce costs in other addressable areas. One of these areas was design changes. Reducing the number of design changes could help First Choice directly improve their bottom-line. First Choice set a target of reducing their design changes to reduce cost by 10% by the end of first year. Harvey was assigned the task of achieving this goal.

Harvey began by studying the various design changes made in the company over the past couple years. He sorted them according to their impact on cost. High cost items occurring frequently needed to be dealt with on a priority. The next step was to formulate a process to detect any factor which could lead to a design change during the design stage itself. One possibility was to create a checklist document which would be manually verified by designer before submitting the design. However, the manual checking process was error prone and would consume significant time for complex models. A tool was needed to implement the checklist in software.

Harvey did some research and came across DFMPro. DFMPro provides a rule framework which could be used to add the design checklist rules as customized rules. The rules could operate on the design features or manufacturing features automatically identified from the model by DFMPro using patented feature recognition technology. This would automate the manual review process. Any design element which could possibly require a change later could be captured in the rule. The rule instance would result in a failure, identifying the problematic area of the design. The designer could then correct it at that point, thus saving an iteration and rework later on.

DFMPro was set up and evaluated for a month. Using DFMPro APIs, rules specific to First Choice were scripted and embedded into the software. Designers started using DFMPro during the design stage. During the month, Harvey identified around 20 possible instances in various designs which could have led to design change requests later on. In one month of evaluation, First Choice could see definite savings which not only covered the cost of DFMPro but contributed directly to the bottom-line. First Choice decided to complete DFMPro deployment and rewarded Harvey for his contribution to the cost saving effort!

Disclaimer: All names and characters mentioned in the stories are fictitious. Any resemblance with real characters/ entities should be considered as mere coincidence.

Designers can improve sheet utilization of sheet metal components at design stage

Major consumers of sheet metal include automotive, aerospace, furniture, white and brown goods, electrical and body building. Parts produced here are in high volume which uses hard tooling. Raw material accounts for approximately 60-75% of the total cost. Research says that 80% of the lifecycle costs of a product are determined during design stage. Wastage of raw material is due to cracking, deformation, failure during manufacturing or due to improper sheet metal utilization.
To reduce wastage of raw material, defects should be reduced along with improving the sheet utilization.
Sheet utilization can be improved during design stage by checking the layout of the nested parts on the given sheet. As a simple example, we take a box which needs to be manufactured. There are various design alternatives through which a box can be manufactured. Given below are two design alternatives that will result in the final component (box).

As a designer, it is not very intuitive which one of these will lead to better sheet utilization and hence lower cost and higher production rate. Using nesting algorithm, designers can check the utilization resulting from each of the above design alternatives.




















From the layout it is very evident that the second design alternative is better as it can nest more number of parts on a given sheet.
As a second interesting case, a slight change in the design of the “C” as shown below, leads to significant jump in the sheet utilization.










The above examples clearly show that if the designer is empowered to visualize the layout of his design, he can take better decisions to improve sheet utilization without impacting the quality of the product. In future, we may see such design alternatives automatically being offered by the software tools.

DFMPro for Injection Molding release plan

DFMPro version 2.0 will address the Design for Manufacturing issues related to Injection Molding. The beta version will be out in couple of months. Following features have been planned for the beta release:

• Minimum Radius at Base of Boss : This rule will check if the radius at root of a boss is greater than specified value.
• Minimum Radius at Tip of Boss : This rule will check if the radius at tip of a boss is greater than specified value.
• Mold wall thickness : This rule will check if the clearance between surfaces in the model is greater than a specified value; thus ensuring that the mold wall thickness is above a specified minimum.
• Maximum cutout area : This rule will check whether the cross sectional of area of a through cutout in the part is greater than a user specified value.
• Rib Reinforcement Check : This rule will check whether the rib in the part needs to be reinforced or not.
• Recommended Rib Parameters : This rule will check whether height, width and thickness of rib are as per specified values.
• Minimum Draft Angle for Core & Cavity : This rule will check whether the draft angle on the part surfaces matches or is greater than the specified draft angle.

The final release will contain some more rules requested by beta users. The initial plan is to provide these rules on Pro/ENGINEER. Later, these will be added to SolidWorks as well.

Design for Injection Molding

In a recent survey conducted over linkedin, a good 40% of the respondents said that they spend anywhere between 10-20% of their time reviewing design from manufacturability aspects. 20% of the respondents even mentioned that they spend more than 20% of their time doing design reviews related to manufacturability. Young design engineers (less than 35 years of age) spent more time on such reviews than experienced engineers. Clearly, addressing the manufacturability issues right at the design stage is the key to time to market, improved quality and reduced cost. Also, capturing the knowledge from the retiring and experienced workforce and passing it on to the new generation is another crucial area.

There are many design guidelines available on the web which mentions the best practices but there are very few tools which can actually enforce these guidelines through automated guidelines.

Some of the common design guidelines for Injection Molding include:

1. Uniform wall thickness : Consistent wall thickness is required to prevent sinks, warps and distortion of parts.
2. Thin wall sections: Thinner walls result in shrinkage during cooling. Gussets provide additional support to reduce warpage.
3. Thick wall sections: Thicker and non-uniform wall thickness can result in sinks in the material. The use of thinner, uniform wall thickness helps to avoid sink.
4. Sharp corners: Sharp corners should be avoided as it results in high stress concentration. Sharp corners should be rounded to reduce the chance of warp, short shorts, splay and flash. If sharp corner on the outside is critical for the part function, EDM process is required to produce sharp corner on the tool.
5. Sudden change in wall thickness: Wall thickness should vary gradually from thick to thin regions. Sharp change in thickness gradient results in high stress concentration.
6. Nominal boss wall thickness: Thick sections need to be avoided to minimize aesthetic problems such as sink marks.
7. Mold wall thickness: Design of the part governs the design of the mold. Mold wall thickness should be adequate for longer tool life.
8. Minimum radii at the base: Minimum radius at the base of the boss is recommended to reduce stress.
9. Minimum radii of core pins: The core pin should have a radius to reduce material turbulence during filling and to help keep stresses to a minimum.
10. Minimum draft angle: Draft on vertical surfaces of part enables easy removal of the part from the mold. A minimum draft angle is required on the core and cavity side.
11. Recommended rib thickness: Thin ribs on thicker walls may provide stiffness, but they can also result in sink. For thick ribs, “core out” the rib from the back. This creates a hollow space underneath the part and maintains a uniform wall thickness.
12. Depth of blind holes: Blind holes are made by core pins supported on one end only. The pins can be deflected and pushed off center by the pressures of the molten plastic material during the molding process.
13. Blind hole bottom thickness: For blind holes, the thickness of the bottom should be greater than 20% of the hole diameter in order to eliminate surface defects on the opposite surface.
14. Through holes: With through holes the cores can be longer as the opposite side of the mold cavity can support them. An alternative is to use a split core fixed in both halves of the mold that interlock when the mold is closed. In cases where longer cores are required, careful tool design is necessary to ensure balanced pressure distribution on the core during filling to limit deflection.
15. Minimum distance between holes: Minimum distance between holes should be maintained. If these distances are not maintained, the holes will be egg shaped or the part will deform in areas around the holes.

After the two modules of DFMPro, Design for Sheet Metal and Design for Machining, the next release of DFMPro will contain Design for Injection Molding. The first release will incorporate some of the rules mentioned above and some more rules as requested by the beta customers.

Stay tuned to catch the first version of the release in couple of months time from now.

DFMPro for ProEngineer Demo Videos

DFMPro for ProEngineer demo videos that explain how to automate Design for Manufacturing reviews and how to customize product for adding your own DFM rules / guidelines.

Geometric launches DFMPro for Pro/ENGINEER

Design for manufacturability checks and analysis performed in a single session

Geometric Limited, a leader in Engineering Services and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions and technologies, today announced the launch of DFMPro for Pro/ENGINEER. This design for manufacturability (DFM) product is integrated within the Pro/ENGINEER design environment, and provides a series of automated checks and analysis to assist a designer in creating designs, which are cost effective and easy to manufacture.
In today’s competitive market, manufacturers use design rules to help improve part quality, and reduce the cost of manufacturing. Manual DFM approaches are time consuming and prone to errors, creating a need for automation in the DFM analysis.
DFMPro is precisely such a revolutionary DFM tool developed for designers to facilitate upstream manufacturability validation and identification of areas in design that are difficult, expensive and impossible to manufacture. This design for manufacturability tool is engineered for quick and in‐depth examination of product manufacturability. It includes advanced design rules for manufacturing processes like milling, drilling, turning and sheet metal fabrication.

Some benefits of DFMPro include:
• Early prediction and prevention of production problems or manufacturing inefficiencies
• Evolution of optimal design and product quality
• Automation of manufacturability review process
• Reduction of lead‐time by reducing backtracking and design iterations
• A scalable framework for manufacturability knowledge capture and reuse

DFMPro for Pro/ENGINEER assists multiple users:
• Design engineers can use DFMPro during design creation to improve designs with respect to manufacturability
• Manufacturing engineers can easily validate multiple designs from internal design departments or external vendors
• New engineers can learn organizational standards and design guidelines on the job using customized rule scripts

This version delivers:
• Seamless integration with Pro/ENGINEER with a simple and intuitive user interface
• Over 30 built‐in Design for Manufacturing rules
• Ability to customize DFM rules using the VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Application) capabilities

For further details and your free 15‐day trial version, please visit:
http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com

Geometric to showcase DFMPro ver 2.0 at SolidWorks World

Geometric Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Geometric Limited and an industry leader in developing advanced manufacturing software will showcase the upcoming releases of CAMWorks® and DFMPro at SolidWorks World 2009, at booth #605, in Orlando, Florida from February 8 to 11, 2009. These products are seamlessly integrated within the SolidWorks® platform, and enable intelligence and automation in design and manufacturing.

Version 2.0 of DFMPro for SolidWorks provides users with additional checks to validate the design for sheet metal parts resulting in stronger parts, and longer die and punch life of the sheet metal model. This version of the design for manufacturability tool supports DFM analysis on an assembly, allowing the user to analyze all the parts in an assembly in a single execution, thus saving time. DFMPro 2.0 generates 3D reports as eDrawings files for easier offline analysis, where problem areas are highlighted and corresponding analysis details are provided in the file itself. For a free trial version of DFMPro, please visit http://dfmpro.geometricglobal.com.

The team from Geometric will be making presentation at the event:
“Get your machined and sheet metal parts ready for manufacturing with DFMXpress and DFMPro” on Monday February 9 , at 1:30 p.m. in room # Swan 9/10.