When used effectively, CAE methods provide enormous cost and time savings for the part design and manufacturing. These tools allow engineers to virtually test how the part will be processed and how it performs during its normal operating life. The material supplier, designer, moulder and manufacturer should apply these tools concurrently early in the design stage of the plastic parts in order to exploit the cost benefit of CAE. CAE makes it possible to replace traditional, sequential decision-making procedures with a concurrent design process, in which all parties can interact and share information, Figure 3. For plastic injection moulding, CAE and related design data provide an integrated environment that facilitates concurrent engineering for the design and manufacture of the part and mould, as well as material selection and simulation of optimal process control parameters.
Qualitative expense comparison associated with the part design changes is shown in Figure 4 , showing the fact that when design changes are done at an early stages on the computer screen, the cost associated with is an order of 10.000 times lower than that if the part is in production. These modifications in plastic parts could arise fr om mould modifications, such as gate location, thickness changes, production delays, quality costs, machine setup times, or design change in plastic parts.
Figure 4.2 Cost of design changes during part product development cycle (Rios et.al, 2001)
At the early design stage, part designers and moulders have to finalise part design based on their experiences with similar parts. However as the parts become more complex, it gets rather difficult to predict processing and part performance without the use of CAE tools. Thus for even relatively complex parts, the use of CAE tools to prevent the late and expensive design changesand problems that can arise during and after injection. For the successful implementation of concurrent engineering, there must be buy-in from everyone involved.
5. Conclusions
In the plastic injection moulding, the CAD model of the plastic part obtained from commercial 3D programs could be used for the part performance and injection process analyses. With the aid of CEA technology and the use of concurrent engineering methodology, not only the injection mould can be designed and manufactured in a very short of period of time with a minimised cost but also all potential problems which may arise from part design, mould design and processing parameters could be eliminated at the very beginning of the mould design. These two tools help part designers and mould makers to develop a good product with a better delivery and faster tooling with less time and money.