Molds are far more than just a simple tool used for casting coins or inner casings. In today's advanced manufacturing world, they integrate various high-tech methods to quickly and accurately form, weld, and assemble materials into parts, components, or finished products. Their advantages—such as efficiency, precision, miniaturization, energy saving, environmental friendliness, and superior product performance and appearance—are unmatched by traditional craftsmanship.
Looking ahead into the 21st century, no industry—whether in electronics, biotechnology, materials science, automotive, or home appliances—can thrive without computer-controlled production lines that rely on molds and machining centers. Molds have become a vital part of modern manufacturing technology, and their level reflects a country’s or company’s overall manufacturing capability. In the coming years, the quality, cost-effectiveness, and technological advancement of China’s five key industries will largely depend on the development of mold technology. Globally, the total output value of molds has already surpassed that of traditional machinery industries like machine tools and cutting tools.
Modular design in mold development is a crucial approach to shortening the overall design cycle and improving the quality of the final product. By leveraging the similarity in structure and function among product components, modular design promotes standardization and flexibility. Practical experience has shown that this method significantly reduces design time and enhances design quality. This paper explores how modular design can be effectively applied to mold development.
Implementing modular design involves several key steps. First, a module library must be established through three main stages: module partitioning, feature modeling, and user-defined feature generation. Standard parts are essentially special cases of modules and are included in the library. The process of defining a standard part typically requires only the last two steps. Module partitioning is the first critical step in modular design, as it directly impacts the functionality, performance, and cost of the system. For molds, functional and structural modules often overlap, with structural modules sometimes containing functional elements and vice versa. Once the modules are designed, their feature models are manually created in Pro/E, and user-defined features (UDFs) are defined using variable size and assembly relationships. These UDFs are then stored using grouping technology, completing the establishment of the module library.
Next, a module library management system is developed to enable efficient module selection and automatic modeling. The system uses two types of reasoning: one to determine the general structure of a module and another to define all its parameters. This ensures the "plasticity" of the module. During the structure selection phase, users input the module name, function parameters, and structural data, and the system identifies the most suitable module from the library. If the result isn’t satisfactory, users can manually select the desired module. At this stage, the module is still incomplete, lacking dimensional, material, and assembly definitions. The second reasoning step automatically generates the full model based on the provided parameters, driving the UDF model to dynamically construct the module and assemble it automatically. This automation was achieved using Pro/TOOLKIT, a C-based development tool for Pro/E, enabling rapid mold design and significantly reducing the development cycle. Since each module is carefully designed, the final mold quality is ensured. The independent nature of UDFs in the library also makes the system highly extensible.
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