Modular Design: An Accelerating Tool for Mold Optimization Design

In the process of stamping die design, modular design can shorten the design cycle and improve design quality, which is a guarantee for the development of enterprises. The key to modular design of molds is to utilize the structural and functional similarities of product components to achieve standardized combination of products, which greatly helps optimize stamping mold design. The implementation of modular design in stamping die design generally involves the following methods:   

1、 Establish module library   

The establishment of a module library involves three steps: module partitioning, constructing feature models, and generating user-defined features. Standard parts are a special case of modules and exist in the module library. The definition of standard parts only requires the last two steps. Module partitioning is the first step in modular design. The rationality of module division directly affects the functionality, performance, and cost of modular systems. The module division of each type of product must undergo technical research and repeated argumentation to obtain the division results. For stamping molds, functional modules and structural modules are mutually inclusive. The structural module can undergo significant structural changes within a local scope, thus it can include functional modules; The local structure of the functional module may be relatively fixed, so it can include structural modules. After the module design is completed, manually construct the feature model of the required module in the Part/Assembly space of Pro/E. Using Pro/E's user-defined feature function, define two variable parameters of the module: variable size and assembly relationship, and form user-defined features (UDFs). After generating user-defined feature files (files with gph suffix), they are named and stored according to grouping techniques, which completes the establishment of the module library.     

2、 Development of module library management system   

The system determines the modules through two rounds of inference, structure selection inference, and automatic modeling of modules. The first inference obtains the approximate structure of the module, and the second inference ultimately determines all parameters of the module. To achieve the goal of module "plasticity" through this approach. In structural selection reasoning, the system accepts module names, functional parameters, and structural parameters input by the user, performs reasoning, and obtains the name of the applicable module in the module library.     

From a different perspective, users can also specify module names. The module obtained in this step is still uncertain, as it lacks definitions of dimensional parameters, accuracy, material characteristics, and assembly relationships. In automatic modeling reasoning, the system utilizes input size parameters, accuracy features, material features, and assembly relationship definitions to drive user-defined feature models, dynamically and automatically construct module feature models, and automatically assemble them. The automatic modeling function is developed using C language and Pro/E's secondary development tool Pro/TOOLKIT. Mold design can be quickly completed through module calls. The application of this system significantly shortens the mold design cycle. Due to careful consideration of module quality during module design, it plays a fundamental role in ensuring the quality of the mold. The module library stores independent UDFs files, so this system has scalability. As can be seen from the above, using modular design can greatly help optimize the design process in stamping die design.