14-Alexandrite

Question

Exploded views for mold openings. Any better way of doing this?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 27, 2020
5 replies
2649 views

Hi Guys,

We are a mold design shop. Making molds for the plastic industry. Mostly small medical and consumer parts.

We currently spend an awful amount of time, making exploded views of our molds opening and closing, slides, lifters etc moving in and out.. etc etc.

There must be a better, more efficient way of doing this? Are there any other Mold design shops on here? What are you guys using to show mold open and close, and parts moving? I'm looking for a way that is quick and easy to do, and easy to modify.

What sucks about making exploded views for each phase of the mold opening, is there is no way to measure how much you have things moving (unless you make a drawing of the exploded view)

You also cannot easily change to a different value. Once you move it in exploded view in one axis, you have no way of knowing how much it was moved (unless you make a drawing)..or remember how far you moved something.

Just looking for some ideas of what others are doing.

Thanks

Jay

Design Exploration

kdirth

21-Topaz I

Not in mold design, and have not done much animation myself, but if you assemble your mold with mechanism, you can use the animation application to animate all of the movements.

There is always more to learn.

D

dunebuggyjay

Author

14-Alexandrite

That would be really time consuming to make everything in a mold assembled with mechanisms.

Looks like the way we currently do it by making a simple exploded view for each ejection stage is a lot quicker than that, as i can move one part say a mold plate, and then copy everything else to its new location (screws and such).

Just wish they could allow measurement in exploded (I did vote for this years ago for an enhancement.. but doesnt look like it will ever happen. ) Mostly the feedback I got was why in the world would i want to measure an exploded view.

My exploded views are not just some blown apart explode. They are carefully positioned parts in a particular place.

Thanks for the help

Jay

P

pausob

19-Tanzanite

@dunebuggyjay wrote:

That would be really time consuming to make everything in a mold assembled with mechanisms.

I disagree; it would take the same amount of time. If you get the training to assemble the components correctly.

If not, then you will spend time fixing locked-up mechanism connections (not fun).

However, positioning things precisely in exploded state is not something I would advise. I guess it works for you, but seems tedious and modification of the position is tricky as there are no dimensions to change / verify.

In your example, you change the location of the mold plate and then you have to copy this exploded position to all the fasteners attached to this plate. This seems much more time consuming than setting up the correct kinematic structure and then using mechanism snapshots to automatically the exploded views.

D

Daniel_319988

1-Visitor

Hi Jay

From what I understood you need to show only the different positions and not a whole animation of the moving parts. Is that correct?

I'm not from a mold design shop, but some time ago I used Family-Tables to show different steps in the assembly of engine-parts. It worked pretty well, but we don't often use it, because we have problems with saving Instances (It’s a problem of our company, not from Creo).

Family-Tables are a parametric way of doing such stuff, and you need to define the placement anyway.

Otherwise we sometimes work with Representations, but that’s more to show an assembly part by part and not for movements.

D

Daniel_319988

1-Visitor

"as i can move one part say a mold plate, and then copy everything else to its new location (screws and such)"

Btw, there is an option called "move with children". It might make it easier

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