Chapter 39: Using Mold Tools
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding SolidWorks' capabilities with mold geometry
Using Mold Tools manually
Mold geometry is one of the most difficult things to visualize. To make a mold for a plastic part, you must be able to envision putting air where you want plastic and putting steel where you want air. You must visualize your parts inside out and in such a way that you can get each part out of the steel. SolidWorks Mold Tools help you with the visualization by providing a process for creating cavity and core blocks from the model of a plastic part. The process doesn't guarantee that the parts are manufacturable; you still need experience in the trade for that.
The SolidWorks Mold Tools give you a process by which you can take plastic parts and split cavity and core blocks for them, as well as additional core pins or slides. This process often requires manual intervention.
To work with the tools in this chapter, you must understand how surfaces work. Features such as the Boundary surface, knit, trim, and others are covered in Chapter 32.
This chapter introduces you to both the formal Mold Tools process and the less formal mold splitting methods used throughout the industry.
Working with the Mold Tools Process
The goal of the Mold Tools process is to produce a single, continuous surface body (the parting surface) that splits the plastic part into two. The split is done in such a way that if the plastic part were subtracted from the center of a bigger ...
