Reverse Engineering of precision casting molds

Customer Requirement:

The assignment was to measure an injection molding tool and create a parametric CAD model of it. The CAD model is to be fully parametric and editable by the customer to enable the production of the upgraded tool.

During the injection molding process, both halves are pressed together with great force by two clamps. The cavities between the halves form the shape of the final part. Hot plastic is then injected into these cavities under high pressure. Once the plastic has solidified, the halves are separated, and the part can be removed. In this case, there were twelve cavities per mold, arranged in a circle around the plastic feed.

Since the existing mold served as the basis for further development, the reverse engineering method was chosen for data generation to meet the required precision.

The CAD data can still be modified afterward. Furthermore, the 3D model allows the design of the new injection mold to be optimally tailored to the required functionality.

“Our requirements for optimizing the injection mold call for a precise 3D model based on scan data. The solution provided by sigma3D GmbH has achieved this perfectly.”

- Reiners + Fürst GmbH & Co. KG, Jürgen Smekal, Project Manager -

Measurement Task:

Very high speeds are reached when processing yarns in spinning machines. Guiding these yarns through the ring and runner during winding onto the spindles is considered a critical point in the manufacturing process.

Consequently, the rings and runners are of extraordinary importance as individual components within the overall system of all parts of a spinning machine. To address this, the manufacturer is constantly advancing the development of these components.

Research has shown that the operational reliability and availability of spinning machines could be further improved through optimizations in the area of runners. The intelligent use of existing resources ultimately made it possible to incorporate existing materials into the design of the upgraded runner tools. The existing tools required only minor modifications in a few places to meet the new requirements.

However, since these tools represented the state-of-the-art in practical development, it was first necessary to generate the corresponding CAD data.

Using a scan camera and the polygonal model—which served as the basis for the reverse engineering process—a parametric 3D solid model was created.

Result:

The 3D model generated based on the existing mold is a fully-fledged design result. Thanks to the parametric structure of the CAD data, the part geometry can still be modified later, which provides the customer with modeling options in the long term.

Furthermore, using the created 3D model, the customer can optimally tailor the design of the new injection mold to the required functionality.