Tooling Essentials - Draft Angles

Tooling Essentials with Plyable Engineer Andy Haines

Welcome to our first Tooling Essentials!

Whether it’s new to you or a swift refresher, these are just a few of the important considerations required when designing the perfect tool for your part.

Today we begin with Draft Angles.

The geometry of your part needs to allow it to be removed from the mold easily and quite simply, the more draft there is the easier this will be.

Draft is the angle relative to the direction the part is extracted from the mold.

In lots of instances this means just adding a slight angle to the vertical walls of the tool that are almost parallel with the direction you have to pull the part to release it from the mold.

You can see that the sides aren’t exactly parallel for the tool on the right – they are angled at 5 degrees from vertical. Once the part is physically separated from the mold, it will get looser the further it is removed.

If there was no draft angle to the sides of the mold, you’d have to drag the part up the sides of the mold and any variation or error could result in the part binding up or getting stuck, ultimately leading to damage.

There are cases where you can ignore draft angle – but mainly for one-off parts where the tools can be destroyed in releasing the part. If you definitely need parallel sides, you should consider splitting your mold into two.

As a general rule of thumb we recommend 1degree for every 25mm/1 Inch of depth to be released.

The Plyable Uploader will instantly detect difficult draft angles, as well as other design for manufacture (DfM) issues when you upload your component CAD. You can also select between single and split molds to see which is the better fit for your process.

As always, our engineers are just a click away for questions or reassurance.

We believe your Tooling is one of the most critical factors to consider, both when designing the part but also when defining your manufacturing process.

At Plyable we say great tools = great parts. If you get it right, everything that follows is so much easier.

Upload your component files at Plyable for instant Design for Manufacture (DfM) feedback, quotes in any material and fast, free, expert advice from our Engineers.

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