Cimatron Mold Design

Data Import

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Import your customer data and start working within seconds:

• Start working as soon as you get your customer's part data. Heal and stitch data or work with non-stitched models and poor-quality imported data.
• Quickly and reliably import your customer’s part data with automatic data validation and highly-accurate conversion from all standard formats including DXF, IGES, STEP, VDA, Parasolid (including binary), SAT (ACIS), STL, and SAB.
• Take advantage of native read/write options for popular CAD systems including Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Autodesk® Inventor®, CATIA®, PTC® Creo®, Siemens® NX™, Siemens Solid Edge®, and SOLIDWORKS®.
• Import relevant product manufacturing information (PMI) from several proprietary formats.

Quoting

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Win more business with quick and accurate quoting:

• Spot undercuts—immediately locating lifters, sliders, and areas that require mending—using QuickSplit.
• Obtain a quick and accurate estimate of the mold base cost with preliminary designs that include the placement of primary mechanisms such as sliders and runners.
• Clearly visualize and analyze engineering changes for accurate and efficient cost estimates.
• Produce accurate cost estimates based on a mold base layout with the MoldQuote Generator using the information you define to calculate a price for quoting automatically.
• Print ready-to-send, professional-looking quotes that include embedded screenshots of preliminary designs.

Parting

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Use QuickSplit, the industry’s fastest and most accurate parting and cavity design tool:

• Start mold design immediately on any model, regardless of the part quality.
• Ensure flawless parting with dedicated analysis tools to identify undercuts, check geometry, and verify parting surfaces.
• Define multiple opening directions—automatically assign faces to the correct directions, supporting any number of sliders and lifters.
• Quickly generate geometry for cores, cavities, lifters, sliders, and other active components for even the most complex molds.
• Apply engineering changes to parting methodically at any point in the project.
• Quickly perform mending and surfacing work using powerful hybrid solid/surface modeling capabilities tailored specifically to the tooling industry.
• Shorten delivery times by using applicative tools to send components to NC, milling, and wire EDM on the first day of design.

Preliminary Mold Design

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Create quick preliminary 3D designs to evaluate strategies and gain customer approval:

• Design any size mold with thousands of surfaces—handling any mold layout including multi-cavity and family molds.
• Easily place all the components of your mold including plates, sliders, lifters, inserts, and other catalog parts as well as cooling, ejection, and runner systems.
• A preliminary bill of materials (BOM) is generated so that you can order material and start initial machining in parallel to final design approval.

Mold Base Design

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Load an entire mold base plate set in just minutes using standard and user-defined catalog parts:

• Easily load a standard mold base from commercial catalogs.
• Work efficiently with non-standard mold bases using a dynamic mold base template that includes all components (plates, sliders, etc.).
• Instantly modify component dimensions and replace parts in the mold base at any point in the mold design process.

Core, Cavity, and Sliders

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Leverage automation to complete design of the mold’s main components rapidly:

• Quickly and easily design the core, cavity, and sliders.
• Easily implement engineering changes to mold components by maintaining associativity with initial parting work throughout the process.

Catalog Parts

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Work with a large selection of commercial catalogs:

• Browse through up-to-date catalog libraries to find the right part with the right dimensions.
• Automatically adapt the catalog part or sub-assembly to the main assembly’s dimensions or to design details such as punch hole dimensions.
• Integrate catalog parts into assemblies by automatically creating pockets in every plate the part goes through and threading the pocket where necessary.
• Associate catalog parts with their drilling procedures to streamline NC programming.
• Create your own personalized catalogs.
• Access additional catalog parts using the Cadenas portal.

Lifters Design

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Use a dedicated, applicative tool for lifters to speed the design process:

• Place lifters from commercial or user-defined catalogs in one operation.
• Cut even the most complex lifters automatically while previewing the faces taken into consideration in the operation to ensure an optimal result.
• Create cavity and core pockets to enable wire EDM and milling to begin on the first day of design.

Inserts Design

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Use a dedicated, applicative tool for inserts to speed your design process:

• Use powerful tools to design inserts automatically, even before the plate has been cut, which allows machining to begin at an early stage.
• Easily create wedges by applying custom shapes or manually defining their placement.
• Cut cavity and core pockets to enable wire EDM and drilling/milling to begin on the first day of design.

Ejection Systems

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Use dedicated, applicative tools for the ejection systems to boost your design process:

• Add hundreds of ejectors from commercial or user-defined catalogs in a single step; the system will find the right spot, analyze the plates they go through, and take care of the trimming automatically.
• Create pockets that are tight around the upper end of the ejector and loose along the body.
• Associate ejectors with their drilling procedures to streamline NC programming.

Cooling Systems Design

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Use applicative tool for cooling channels design to boost your design process:

• Simplify the creation of complex cooling systems and all required cooling items (channels, plugs, connectors, baffles, nipples, etc.) with dedicated design tools.
• Detect any interference and receive alerts if cooling channels are positioned too close to other key components.
• Ensure mold and part quality by simulating the plastic filling and cooling of the mold.
• Associate cooling channels with their drilling and gun drilling procedures to streamline NC programming.

Conformal Cooling Design

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Use applicative tools to design conformal cooling channels and dramatically reduce the injection cycle time by using additive manufacturing technologies.

Design

• Use the dedicated toolset in Cimatron for fast conformal cooling design.
• Design cooling channels of any complexity using hybrid design tools that consist of mesh, surfaces, solid, and wireframes.
• Apply local technological offsets for post-printing (subtractive) operations.
• Validate cooling efficiency, reduction of cooling time, and part warpage as well as filling analysis with FEA tools.

Print

• Use our wide range of ProXTM direct metal printers to achieve high-quality, high-strength tooling steel and long-life molds.
• Enjoy the unique printer capabilities to print internal cooling channels without the need for support structures.
• If you don’t own a printer, send your inserts design online to Quickparts® services and get the produced parts within a few days.

Post-printing operations

• Design and manufacture fixtures to mount printed inserts, considering the local technological offsets.
• Finish the part holes and high-accuracy surfaces by using the Cimatron 2.5- to 5-axis milling and drilling capabilities.
• Complete the work on tiny, accurate details by using the Cimatron electrode (EDM) application.

Runners Design

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Use a dedicated, applicative tool to design the runners quickly and easily:

• Sketch runners in 2D to automatically convert them into 3D runners with the easy addition of sprue bushing.
• Design non-planar runners in 3D with a mechanism that helps avoid undercuts.

Motion Analysis and Collision Detection

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Validate your design with built-in measurement, analysis, and collision detection capabilities:

• Employ tools such as Wall Thickness Analysis, Body Integrity Analysis, Draft Angle Analysis, Direction Analysis, Curvature Map, Interference Check, Moldex3D, and many more to ensure early identification of product quality issues.
• Simulate tool kinematics to locate and identify collisions and eliminate design errors.

ECO Management

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Effectively analyze, implement, verify, track, and manage engineering change orders (ECOs):

• Easily identify the geometry changed by the customer and the impact on mold components.
• Automatically replace existing geometry with the ECO geometry.
• Perform verification checks to ensure that all necessary changes have been implemented correctly.
• Track ECOs and document changes for reporting, costings, and customer communication.

Drawings

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Create and reuse drawing templates incorporating customer specifications:

• Use powerful drafting options for mold drawings including the ability to create sections on open objects and broken views.
• Easily add a bill of material and table of holes to your drawings.
• Save time with automated placement of center lines, coordinate labels, and other drawing elements.
• Generate drawings with all the information needed to order components, shop floor operators, quality assurance, and customer documentation.
• Define drafting views on-the-fly during the modeling process, then quickly convert them into drawings.
• Create and reuse templates incorporating customer standard drawing specifications.
• Reduce drawing file size by creating links with the original data.

Fast, Efficient Programming

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• Enjoy background toolpath calculations and parallel execution of procedures for better hardware use and significant time savings.
• Preview procedure results and parameters before they are calculated with a highly-accurate visualization of the remaining stock compared with the part.
• Benefit from confident machining with a highly-accurate embedded material removal simulator, gouge and collision detection, and color-coded deviation map.
• Benefit from centralized control over NC data and cutter support for multiple materials.
• Reuse templates or sequences in the same project or in a totally different project. Templates and sequences can also help you standardize machining in your tool shop.

Built-In CAD Functionality

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• Take advantage of a full hybrid system that enables you to combine wireframe, surfaces, local open solid, and solid functions as part of the NC environment.
• Optimize machining by adding surfaces and contours, capping holes and slots, and extending surfaces, as well as applying drafts and rounds using dedicated features.

Efficient Roughing

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• Undertake quick and effective ultra-high volume milling on 3D stock shapes with Rough VoluMill.
• Ensure short machining times for any selected machining strategy with continuously-updated multi-axis stock.
• Check for tool shank and holder collisions against the auto-updated stock automatically at all stages of roughing and re-roughing operations.
• Generate a high-speed milling (HSM), all-rounded toolpath with constant tool load, trochoidal milling, advanced clean between passes, efficient rough between layers, and state-of-the-art ridge removal.

High-Quality Finishing

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• Choose from a rich set of 3- to 5-axis-optimized machining strategies including:
  • Adaptive Z layers
  • True spiral motions
  • All rounded motions
  • Flow-line machining
  • Cleanup (rest machining) and pencil
  • Slope controlled finishing
  • Optimized CBP (clean between passes)
  • Unique ridges handling by zero overlap trochoidal
  • Prevent waterfall
  • Air extensions
  • Uniform approach and retract
• Automatically adapt machining strategies to achieve a high, polish-free surface quality using built-in analysis of local slopes.
• Benefit from highly-efficient machining with any cutter combination in cleanup.

Full 5-Axis Capabilities for Mold Making

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• Reduce the need for electrodes with direct milling of narrow slots and tiny corner radiuses.
• Use a single setup for multi-side operations.
• Choose from a rich selection of machining strategies and support a complete range of cutters including tapered cutters, lollipop tools, and slot mill cutters.
• Support positioning and continuous milling, providing full control over the tilt and lead angles as well as gouge and collision check of the tool shank and holder against the part.
• Generate touch-of-a-button 5-axis tilting toolpaths, especially suitable for rapid machining of parts with deep cavities, narrow ribs, and tiny corner radiuses, using shorter and more rigid tools for best surface quality and reduced machine time.
• Verify all toolpaths and eliminate unnecessary tryouts with advanced post-processor-based simulation capabilities including material removal, remaining stock, and complete machine kinematics.

Plate Machining and Drilling

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• Achieve efficient and accurate machining of plates with powerful pocket or profile milling options and full drilling capabilities.
• Use flexible sequences for faster programming of hole drilling.
• Save 90 percent of drill programming time by allowing the system to assign appropriate drilling sequences for hundreds of holes in seconds automatically.
• Produce optimized cooling channels with gun drilling machines using automatic intersection detection and optimized drilling order.
• Enjoy automatic transfer of hole properties assigned during the tool design phase and save time with reduced sequence management.
• Program wire EDM machining in 2- or 4-axis wire modes, ensuring optimal CNC performance with a built-in database of EDM machines.
• Check for gouges with holder collision check against the part, actual remaining stock, and clamps.

Advanced Micro Milling for Miniature, High-Precision Milling

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Cimatron is a pioneer in the field of micro milling, offering dedicated micro-machining strategies to manufacture molds for very small, high precision parts cost-effectively.

• Generate superb surface quality with tolerances as tight as 0.0001mm using cutting tools with diameters as small as 0.1 mm.
• Use the Cimatron micro-milling capabilities to support cutting-edge direct milling.

Simulation and Post-Processor Support

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• View the cutting process and its results prior to machining with a color-coded display to help analyze the remaining material around the part.
• Simulate the real machine kinematics and toolpath motion checking tool shanks and holders against the part with advanced simulation generated with the G-code. The ability to predict machine behavior enables you to correct and eliminate errors ahead of time.
• Choose from a rich library of post processors for practically all 3-axis and 5-axis machines as well as all leading controllers.
• Easily customize a state-of-the-art post-processor generator to any specific needs.

NC Setup and Tool Table Reports

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• Generate NC setup and tool table reports automatically as you post process a program.
• Customize reports for the shop floor to include company logo, machine time, machine limits, and other user-specific data and parameters.
• Capture G-code output sessions for enhanced milling control and future use.