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Plastic Extrusion Die Design, Software Recommendations

ADFToolmaker

Cast Iron
Joined
Mar 12, 2012
Location
Hamilton, New Zealand
Hi Everyone,

We are a toolmaking operation in a group of companies involved in metal pressing, injection molding, blow molding, and plastic extrusion. We design and build tooling for all those processes, but to date we have only been involved in extrusion dies for symmetrical profiles, mainly round tube.

The extrusion guys are getting opportunities to run asymmetrical profiles now, and need tooling made. We are in New Zealand, where the extrusion expertise seems locked inside the walls of the extrusion companies. To get tooling made or even designed we have to go offshore, which our owners hate to do. As our specialist area as toolmakers is injection molding, we know we are not in a good place to start making asymmetrical profiles and have them run well. Our owners have given us the opportunity to try and gain experience in this area. As much as there is no substitute for experience, we are hoping the right design software can at least give us a head start.

We design with Solidworks, I see there are add-ins for extrusion die design, but don't want to waste our money if they are not up to the job. It is unlikely we will have a budget to buy the best there is, but am looking for comments from folk who have experience either good or bad with the packages available.

I am also able to read, so if anyone can recommend a good book on the subject, I would be interested to hear about that as well. We are not afraid of a bit of math and physics. We recently designed and built an adjustable coat hanger sheet extrusion die based on some published formulae which runs very well. It's just going to be time consuming to do calculations and iterations like that every time.

Thanks in advance

Andrew
 
Hey Andrew,

The Solidworks Platics software is really powerful. There are three different levels, getting more capabilities as one goes up the price chain. Talk to your Solidworks reseller to get a 30 day trial of the Plastics Premium package (top tier) along with an on site demo of said.

BR,

Chazsani


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