SolidWorks 2010 Bible

Chapter 32: Using Plastic Features and Mold Tools

Working with the Mold Tools Process

The SolidWorks Mold Tools are intended to help you create cavity and core blocks for injection

molds. They do not provide libraries or functionality for building the entire mold or mold compo-

nents. Mold Tools entail a semiautomatic process to follow, with the tools in order on the toolbar.

Mold Tools rely heavily on surfacing, and require a fair amount of manual intervention for certain

types of parts. The next section deals with the manual intervention techniques. This section deals

with the idealized semiautomatic process.

In order to fully understand the formalized Mold Tools process, it might be helpful to understand

SolidWorks’ capabilities with mold geometry in general. First, understand that to create cavity and

core geometry in SolidWorks, you are not required to use the Mold Tools. You can manually

model surfaces or solid features to accomplish the same tasks. Surface features are widely used for

mold modeling because they allow you far more control than solid features.

You can also make mold geometry using an assembly of in-context parts or multi-body techniques.

The formal Mold Tools uses the multi-body approach. This has benefits and drawbacks.

With the formal SolidWorks process, you start in part file with just the final plastic part in it, and

then build both the cavity and core blocks around the plastic part. You also build any side actions

or core pins within the part file.

Figure 32.20 shows the part of the Mold Tools toolbar that identifies the process. From the left to

the right, the icons are:

l Split Line

l (^) Draft
l Move Face
l (^) Scale
l Insert Mold Folders
l (^) Parting Lines
l Shut-off surfaces
l (^) Parting Surfaces
l Tooling Split
l (^) Core
FIGURE 32.20
The Mold Tools