More Insight from Moldflow
22 Jul 2003
Moldflow has announced Version 4.1 of Moldflow Plastics Insight, featuring enhancements in 3D capability, pre- and post-processing productivity improvements, new simulation capabilities and new hardware support.
Used for analysing part designs that tend to be very thick and solid, the 3D solver MPI/Flow3D now includes prediction of fibre orientation and the resulting mechanical properties as well as the prediction of their contribution to part warpage.
MPI 4.1 also introduces simulation of new moulding methods, including Synventive Molding Solutions' Dynamic Feed system and the Trexel MuCell injection moulding process.
In addition, local mesh density specification will significantly increase cooling analysis solver speed, while automatic AVI file creation, multiple anchor planes, cylindrical coordinate system display of warpage results and geometry-dependent XY plots make it easier to decrease model preparation and analysis times and communicate results.
The new software also supports the Intel Itanium 64-Bit processor on HP UX platforms and 3D Connexion's 3D motion controllers, including the Spaceball and Spacemouse.
Enhancements to the Application Programming Interface (API) have also been made. New features allow users to extract scalar, vector or tensor result data from MPI and create custom result plots with that data, create static plots from custom data or animations from a sequence of custom data, create custom XY plots and extract diagnostic data.
Synventive's Dynamic Feed is a hot runner system which provides independent melt pressure-based process control for up to 32 nozzles in a single mould, and the new analysis capabilities will allow users to simulate all 32 independent melt pressure profiles.
This makes it possible to predict flow and pack profiles accurately within a Dynamic Feed system, so that productivity and quality improvements can be realised for family, precision, and large part moulds.
Trexel's MuCell microcellular foam injection moulding process uses supercritical fluids of inert gases to create evenly distributed and uniformly sized microscopic cells throughout a polymer, resulting in parts that tend to be lighter, flatter and straighter than conventionally moulded parts. The MuCell simulation results available in MPI 4.1 include the filling pattern, injection pressure and cell size, all critical factors in optimising a given part for the process, as well as optimising the MuCell process itself.
