how to force injection molding?

[dbc]

Hi,

It's been well over a year since I did anything with eMachineShop. I see several good updates and improvements.

However... the new software has me confused. I have a part that I want to design and price out as an injection molding part. I have no interest in other processes, I'm only interested in IM and driving the cost as low as I can there while prototyping, before I turn on large volumes. How can I force an injection molding process? All I see for machine selections is "auto".

The cost reduction advice is worse than useless. A list of 3 and 4 digit machine numbers is utterly meaningless and totally unhelpful. Machine 317 is incompatible. Ummm... what is machine 317? What is it incompatible with? My material? My "chosen" mystery process that you chose for me? My design rules (draft, radii, ....)?

So... my root question: How to I force an injection molding tool flow, and get design rule checks and cost reduction advice that are relevant to injection molding?

[Tech2]

You indicated you are interested in driving the cost as low as possible. That is what the Auto selection does. If Auto finds another process that is lower cost than injection molding do you still want injection molding? If so, why?

Why do you say the cost reduction advice is not useful - the cause and recommended action is listed in that grid. The more of those recommendations you can address, the more options the system will have to optimize your cost.

[dbc]

[Tech2]

Why do you eventually want the part to be IM? Is it the finish? The tolerance? Something else?

Yes the analyzer checks are related to the machine that produces the part.

I would need to see the file to better understand the cost reduction messages that you feel were not helpful.

[dbc]

So, how do I force IM design rule checks, regardless of how you decide to make the part?

[Tech2]

The CAD does not have such a feature. You would need to reference: Plastic Injection Molding

[dbc]

Well, I'll just say this. As a designer, it would be very useful to take a proposed design, and select various design rule check regimes, and look at the resulting reports. Design rules for IM, milling, etc. It would head off mistakes where you design in a feature that you can get away with in a low volume process that torpedos a high volume process. Or an alternate view is it would illuminate how a design would need to change as you transition from prototype to production volumes. In both cases, it helps planning and eliminates mystery.

I'll admit it has been a long time since I looked at eMachineShop's software. It seems to have evolved in the direction of increased automation at the expense of decreased transparency. I won't use a tool that makes me guess what mysterious thing I need to do to cajole it into producing the output that I want. I don't have time for that.