When it comes to manufacturing, staying at the forefront of innovation is crucial for success. Plyable has been redefining industry standards with our groundbreaking advancements in automated mold design. This article explores Plyable’s innovative technology and the transformative impact on the manufacturing landscape.
The Evolution of Mold Design
Traditional manufacturing mold design has long been a manual, time-consuming process. Engineers would need to meticulously design all the intricate details necessary for machine creation. The Plyable team recognised early on the limitations of this traditional approach and identified a critical need for automating the mold design process. As manufacturing processes have evolved, so has the demand for more precise, efficient, and automated solutions.
Plyable’s Journey into Automation
Our breakthrough came with the realisation that the manual process of importing designs into CAD software, extruding edges, and refining details was no longer sustainable at scale and in a rapidly advancing technological landscape.
Plyable’s engineers sought to replicate the accuracy achieved through manual processes, but with the efficiency of automation. The challenge was significant – there are currently no existing tools that could fulfil this requirement. We developed a proprietary method to automatically extrude the shape’s boundary tangentially, extending it seamlessly to a rectangular box.
Plyable’s system now boasts the ability to create a STEP file of the mold. The entire process is 100% computer-driven, eliminating human intervention in creating the file.
“Noticing that engineers designing tooling encountered the same limitations in CAD software for each job, we designed tools that could reliably perform these missing features such as tangential boundary extrusion and filling spaces between surfaces and their bounding boxes. Together with existing Plyable capabilities of automatic mold solution and pull direction finding, we can automate the entire process of tool design.”
Lily Penrose, Research Software Engineer
Features Redefining Mold Design
Beyond the core innovation, Plyable has also introduced user-friendly features that significantly enhance the mold design process. For example, the ability to seamlessly place the mold into a box and the automation of laser targeting holes are not just niceties but crucial time-saving functionalities.
Reducing Lead Times
The impact of Plyable’s automated mold design is most profound in the reduction of lead times. What was once a labour-intensive, time-consuming process is now accelerated to the point where a mold can be uploaded, evaluated, and sent to a supplier in a matter of minutes. This reduction in lead times has far-reaching implications for the entire manufacturing process, empowering manufacturers to respond swiftly to changing demands, reduce costs, shorten production cycles, and enhance overall operational efficiency.
Expanding Compatibility and Future Prospects
While Plyable’s focus with the Automated Mold Design system has initially been on carbon fibre parts, the team is actively working on expanding its compatibility to include a broader range of materials. We’ll also be expanding the system to be able to model multi-mold parts, meaning a wider range of components can be accommodated.
The Future of Automated Mold Design
As manufacturing landscapes continue to evolve, innovations like Plyable’s automated mold design are instrumental in maintaining competitiveness. The reduction in lead times, seamless integration of user-friendly features, and ongoing efforts to expand compatibility showcase Plyable’s dedication to shaping the future of manufacturing. In a world where speed and precision are paramount, Plyable stands at the forefront, propelling the industry towards unprecedented efficiency.