617-135 Two and Three Plate Mold Design
Applies strategies and techniques to develop plastic and die cast mold design concepts, fully detailed mold components and stock lists to prepare two- and three-plate mold designs for manufacture. Students apply shrinkage and draft, select mold materials, cooling methods, gating style, ejection techniques, parting line locations, standard and custom mold components to meet customer requirements. (Prerequisites: 617-108 Orthographic Projection Concepts; 617-114 CADD (Computer-Aided Design and Drafting), SolidWorks; 617-130 Mold Making Processes)
Design projects completed in this course include designing a two-plate and a three-plate plastic injection mold, a hot chamber die cast mold with a runner sprue, an injection mold with both a CAM pin and a hydraulic cylinder actuated slide. The final design is for a real-life product mold. Students are free to choose any part they are interested in designing a mold for. A portion of their grade is dependent on the complexity of the design they choose. Past student designs have required the use of lifters, stripper plates, insert molding, molded threads and hot runner systems. For all designs except the real-life product, students are given CAD geometry of a part that they are asked to design a specific production-style mold to produce. The students must then add shrink to the geometry for the molding material specified and any draft not included on the part file. Any changes to the part must be preapproved by the customer (instructor) in writing. A minimum of one design must be completed in 2D AutoCAD and another one must be completed using a parametric solid modeler such as SolidWorks, ProEngineer or Unigraphics. Students are evaluated by their completion of mold designs, tests, course assignments and core abilities.
Click on the links below to see some of the molds students have designed.
