Mould design optimisation by FEM

Production can be briefly defined as creating something new as a result of effort. There are many different production methods. With the industrial revolutions, the number of these methods has increased, and these methods have developed. Over time, heavy and laborious work that people had to do began to be done by machines. The casting method, which is one of the most common production methods in the world, is to pour the molten metal or its alloy into a mould cavity suitable for the shape of the desired product and remove it from the mould after it solidifies. In this study, firstly, the manufacturing method by casting was mentioned, and the difficulties of mould design in the casting method were explained. Secondly, the benefits of computer-aided simulation programs for casting are explained. As an example, a model was designed and different runners were added to this model. These models, which were prepared afterwards, were cast in a virtual environment with the FLOW-3D CAST program, which is a simulation program. Casting results and casting defects after these castings were compared and interpreted. The results show that it is important for the casting quality to keep the runner diameters as small as possible in runner designs. Two or three times more air voids are formed in the sand mould casting method compared to the permanent mould casting. Additionally, it was observed that the casting material had less shrinkage in the sand mould casting method. It is concluded that sand mould casting is disadvantageous in terms of the parameter of time.

Optimisation of Mould Design for Injection Moulding – Numerical Approach

Computer simulation of injection moulding process is a powerful tool for optimisation of moulded part geometry, mould design and processing parameters. One of the most frequent faults of the injection moulded parts is their warpage, which is a result of uneven cooling conditions in the mould cavity as well as after part ejection from the mould and cooling down to the environmental temperature. With computer simulation of the injection moulding process it is possible to predict potential areas of moulded part warpage and to apply the remedies to compensate/minimize the value of the moulded part warpage. The paper presents application of simulation software Moldex 3D in the process of optimising mould design for injection moulding of thermoplastic casing.

3D-printed moulds for image-guided surgical biopsies: an open source computational platform

ABSTRACTPURPOSESpatial heterogeneity of tumours is a major challenge in precision oncology. The relationship between molecular and imaging heterogeneity is still poorly understood, as it relies on the accurate co-registration of medical images and tissue biopsies. tumour moulds can guide the localization of biopsies, but their creation is time consuming, technologically challenging, and difficult to interface with routine clinical practice. These hurdles have so far hindered the progress in the area of multiscale integration of tumour heterogeneity data.METHODSWe have developed an open source computational framework to automatically produce patient-specific 3D-printed moulds that can be used in the clinical setting. Our approach achieves accurate co-registration of sampling location between tissue and imaging, and integrates seamlessly with clinical, imaging and pathology workflows.RESULTSWe applied our framework to patients with renal cancer undergoing radical nephrectomy. We created personalised moulds for five patients, obtaining Dice similarity coefficients between imaging and tissue sections ranging from 0.86 to 0.93 for tumour regions, and between 0.70 and 0.76 for healthy kidney. The framework required minimal manual intervention, producing the final mould design in just minutes, while automatically taking into account clinical considerations such as a preference for specific cutting planes.CONCLUSIONOur work provides a robust and automated interface between imaging and tissue samples, enabling the development of clinical studies to probe tumour heterogeneity on multiple spatial scales.

Sand Mould Design for Casting an Aluminium Pot-A Basic Procedure of Supplementing Artisanal Practices

Artisanal green sand casting of aluminum pots is a notable flourishing business in many urban areas of west and central Africa but seen to be typified by labor-intensive and subjective control of a large number of variables to successfully cast. Correct mold designs with in-flow and cooling rates of molten aluminum are fundamental in reducing labor and defects in the castings. The paper presents sand mold design for casting 30litre-capacity cylindrical aluminum pot of internal diameter 314.7mm, depth 386mm, and wall thickness 4mm with handling lugs alongside its cover using unpressurized gating system ratio of 1:3:3. The design provides suitable specifications of the ladle position, mass and pouring time and in-flow rate of molten aluminum, layout for the mold components, means of compensating process cooling shrinkages of aluminum during solidification, patterns for the castings, and molding box. The motive behind the paper was to emphasize and exemplify the use of basic engineering design procedure for supplementing artisanal green sand molding practices for improving consistency and productivity, and minimizing laboriousness and casing defects with improved profitability in the business.