SOLIDWORKS

Industrial Design to Hand Mould in SOLIDWORKS

Business, SOLIDWORKS Technical Update

I have completed my Post Diploma in plastic mold design. There I studied about plastic like mold, how many types of mold are present, how we manufacture plastics and many more. When I got a job as a technical executive in SOLIDWORKS you won’t believe that SOLIDWORKS proved that it is one of the easiest, fastest and convenient software for designing.We can easily extract core and cavity, we can analysis plastics easily and many more. Now I will show you how it is useful in SOLIDWORKS. Before that, I would like to share briefly  about, mold, hand mold, and how it will be helpful for the designer to execute in  SOLIDWORKS MOULD:- Mould means a combination of two mold halves i.e. Core and Cavity…Core means it is the internal part of the mold and Cavity means it is the external part of the mold. Let’s Know about Hand Mould – In injection moulding, hand molds are the simple mold which is used in less quantity. There is no supply of heat, cooling, or ejection. Heating plates are essential in every cycle time of hand mold to heat the molds and after every cycle time, we have to remove the mold to get the product. As a result, it enhances the cycle time, its limit is for short run and mold cost is low. Almost hand mold has a single cavity but we can make multi-cavity by making the mold small in construction. To make part simple it is usually of 2 plate mold or 3 plate mold. For short form of the mold it can be made from aluminium brass and for the requirement of more parts, then they are made from conventional steels. SOLIDWORKS gives a great advantage with design and validation of parts and tools in one system. Designers can demonstrate that parts can be molded successfully, along with the checking for draft, thickness, and undercuts to ensure the correct geometry for molding. Mould Design Capabilities in SOLIDWORKS Standard:- Complete plastic part and advanced surfacing design tools Geometry Import, Repair, and Healing tools Draft Analysis, Undercut Analysis, and Thickness Analysis tools Parting line tools Parting surface tools Automated “fill surface” capability for easy shutoff surface creation Core and cavity splitting tools SOLIDWORKS 3D mold bases available online and directly from major mold suppliers SOLIDWORKS configurations to create customizable configurations of molds and mold components Compare Part tools to visually see in 3D what geometry was added or removed when design changes occur Production quality mold drawing creation tools Seamless integrations with several industries leading CAM products allowing NC tool paths to automatically update with part design and tooling changes.

SOLIDWORKS

How Does Home Licensing for SOLIDWORKS Work?

SOLIDWORKS Technical Update

SOLIDWORKS users have long enjoyed the ability to use their software from both their home/mobile and work offices. How is this accomplished without running afoul of the EULA (End User License Agreement), which only permits one license enabled on any one computer at any one time? In our previous two blog posts, we examined perpetual licenses (Standalone and SNL) and term licenses. Let’s first look at standalone licenses. Standalone licenses are intended for an individual user of SOLIDWORKS or a related product. It uses an activation process to enable your license to operate after installation. Once the software is activated on a computer, it remains permanently enabled until such time as you choose to deactivate it. If you would like to run SOLIDWORKS on another computer, you must first deactivate (using “Help – Deactivate Licenses”) the computer holding your SOLIDWORKS_License. The Activate/Deactivate function inside the software allows you to install SOLIDWORKS on as many computers as you wish – ensuring only one computer is operational with SOLIDWORKS at any one time SOLIDWORKS Standalone / perpetual licenses with subscription service for an individual user as displayed inside the application. If you would like to run SOLIDWORKS on another computer, you must first deactivate (using “Help – Deactivate Licenses”) the computer holding your SOLIDWORKS license. The Activate/Deactivate function inside the software allows you to install SOLIDWORKS on as many computers as you wish – ensuring only one computer is operational with SOLIDWORKS at any one time. Standalone licenses are activated/deactivated under the Help menu in SOLIDWORKS allowing you to run the software on multiple computers. Users can borrow or hold a license/s for up to 30 days. SNL license usage showing five total licenses, three of which are in-use, one license borrowed, and one license free. SNL, or network licenses (sometimes referred to as “floating” licenses), also uses an activation process but only for the server, which monitors concurrent license usage. The individual clients running SOLIDWORKS or a related product or add-in retrieve a license each time the software is started, and return the license each time it is closed so that another user can use it. SNL clients can “borrow” a license temporarily for up to 30 days, after which time if the license has not been returned, the server will automatically do so. The status of license usage can be checked at any time. Any borrowed licenses will also display in this pane. Home/mobile use is of course possible for term licenses as well. Term licenses, from an installation and entitlement perspective, behave in the same exact manner as standalone licenses, i.e., license access is granted through the activate/deactivate process. If a user would like to run a term license on another computer, the license must first be freed up using Deactivate license under the Help menu as described earlier. This concludes our blog series about licensing with SOLIDWORKS. If you would like to see other articles related to this topic, please comment below and we’ll consider it in a future topic. If you have any difficulties managing your license, our experienced support team is ready to help you out. We hope these tips help you stay productive while working from home. To Get SOLIDWORKS Licenses Cost request for quote and get instant SOLIDWORKS price from the best SOLIDWORKS reseller Related SOLIDWORKS Articles Can You Permanently Buy SOLIDWORKS Software License? What are the different Solidworks Software in India and How to buy? What’s New in SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2022 USE OF SOLIDWORKS EXPLORER

SOLIDWORKS

MIT Students Take Innovative New Product from Dorm Room to Market in Record Time

SOLIDWORKS Technical Update

SOLIDWORKS – MIT Students Take Innovative New Product Any college student will tell you that coffee is often a key ingredient to surviving those stressful days of college when hours of slumber are in short supply. When cost-conscious college students splurge on expensive to-go coffee from places like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, they want to savor every drop of that hot, precious beverage. Get sidetracked for a minute, however, and that hot beverage is suddenly not so hot, literally. Two recent MIT graduates created the Coffee Cookie to extend the amount of time your coffee stays warm. Victoria Gregory and Gabriel Alba are two Mechanical Engineering students who just recently graduated from MIT. Conceived by the duo during an exercise in a Product Engineering class, the Coffee Cookie is a small circular device that attaches to the bottom of a disposable coffee cup and heats the liquid within up to 90 degrees Celsius, and resembles…you guess it, a cookie. Powered by a rechargeable battery, the device can be recharged for daily reuse. After conducting some initial research via an online survey of 300 people, Gregory and Alba determined that respondents—especially millennials—are likely to pitch takeout coffee once it loses heat, typically tossing the final third of the cup. The research results indicated that the device would not need as big of a battery as initially thought, making their burgeoning idea doable.   Bringing an idea to life Hatching an idea for a new product is just the first of many arduous steps for startups. Like any entrepreneurs, Gregory and Alba had to figure out how to bring their idea to life. During the pair’s sophomore year, they both learned how to use SOLIDWORKS for a class project to design a robot. While Gabriel had previous experience using a suite of Autodesk products during high school, he felt more comfortable using SOLIDWORKS. “SOLIDWORKS just clicks more with the way I think and the way I design products,” says Alba. The pair pitched their idea to the board of the Sandbox Innovation Fund Program at MIT where they were awarded $10,000 to seed their startup. Over winter break from school, the two embarked on creating prototypes of the device. Making use of both dorm rooms and student maker spaces, the two put in long hours over those four weeks, sometimes up to 24 hours straight. In a single day, they designed and 3D printed the device so they would have physical proof of concept. While the first one lacked the sophistication of typical prototypes—part of which was held together with hot glue—the pair soldiered on to creating several more prototypes that would fit a variety of disposable cups. With a very limited budget and a tight timeframe with which to work, the students knew that any mistakes made along the way could jeopardize the project. To prevent that from happening, the two unleashed the power of SOLIDWORKS Plastics Simulation software to simulate the plastic flow into the plastic molds that would be used to create the plastic casing for the device’s battery.   SOLIDWORKS Plastics “SOLIDWORKS Plastics would tell us what size to make the gates and how to set up our parameters,” says Gregory. “An experienced mold maker could probably make an educated guess but we wouldn’t know. If we had a part short shot, we would have had to re-make the whole model so using the software saved us a lot of time over doing it from scratch.” To create the printed circuit board (PCB), they used CircuitWorks so they could closely coordinate the design of both the mechanical and electrical components of the device, again mindful of the impact any error would have on their short design cycle. “SOLIDWORKS is such a great learning tool and saved us so much time to do this project while maintaining a full class load at MIT,” says Alba. “SOLIDWORKS has been our best friend for this project.” Once the prototype was complete, the pair decided to ramp up to 1,000 units. They ordered 1,000 batteries from China and spent their time since graduating from MIT in May assembling the units. Recently Gregory and Alba moved to New York City to explore possible avenues through which they can sell their Coffee Cookies to consumers, where they will target mothers, college students, young professionals, and busy executives who must get their caffeine fix on the run but still like it hot.