Inventor 2011 Tutorial

Multi-Body Solids and Mold Tooling

Learning Objectives
After completing this tutorial, you will be able to: Create Multi-body solids Use some of the Plastic Part tools Push out Multi-body Solids to individual parts Create Patching surfaces and Run-off surfaces for Core/Cavity molds.

Required Competencies
Before starting this tutorial, you should have been able to: Construct, constrain and dimension sketches Construct sketch Splines Have a strong understanding of Projects and file management

Email jmather@pct.edu for the example file for this tutorial.

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Create a folder called Vacuum Tooling and then create a project (ipj) with the same name in that folder.

. Send me an email for the example file used in this tutorial. When you open the file you will get a Resolve Link to resolve the link to two image files. I embedded these images in the file - so simply click Skip All. Tutorial 14 Multi-body and Mold Tooling JD Mather 2

Turn off the visibility of the Side Layout sketch and drag the red End of Part (hereafter EOP) just below the Back Profile sketch. Start the Loft command and select Click to add in the Rails window. Select the 4 rails starting with the Bottom Rail and going counterclockwise in the selection order (so that we all do it the same).

Click to add in the Sections window and select the front and back profiles.

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Select the Thicken/Offset command and change the output to Surfaces. Offset the outside of the loft feature to 2.2 towards the inside of the part. Turn off the Visibility of this surface we wont need till later.

Start another Loft and select the face of the solid shown and the Origin Center Point.

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On the Conditions tab set to Tangent and a Weight of 2.5 at the point.

Drag the EOP down below Handle Profile and Sweep the Handle Profile along the Handle Curve sketch as a surface. Tutorial 14 Multi-body and Mold Tooling JD Mather 5

Drag the EOP below the Clearance Profile and Sweep the Clearance Profile along the Clearance Curve sketch as a Surface.

Select the Sculpt tool and the two swept surfaces. Select the option for Remove and make sure the area shown is highlighted red (you might need to flip direction arrows).

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On the Plastic Part tab select Rule Fillet and select the cut Sculpt feature as shown. Radius is 10mm for All Edges.

Drag down the EOP below Nose Split and Extrude the spline as a Surface mid-plane 300mm. Tutorial 14 Multi-body and Mold Tooling JD Mather 7

Thicken/Offset as a Surface the previous surface towards the front of the vacuum a distance of 20mm.

Turn off the visibility of the Solid Bodies and turn on the visibility of the first Thicken/Offset surface that we made. (Tip: We made this surface while it was in its simplest untrimmed state. If we had offset later in the history it would have been a trimmed surface of more complexity.)

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Select the Trim Surface tool and trim away the front of the surface shown. Read through all of the next few steps before continuing.

Select the Trim Surface tool and trim away the back of the surface shown leaving the loop between the two surfaces.

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This trim is a little trickier. Select the remaining trimmed loop surface as the Cutting Tool and then Remove the outside of the offset surface as shown.

For the final trim once again select the trimmed loop surface as the Cutting Tool and this time select the inside hole face of the Extruded surface.

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Stitch the 3 trimmed surfaces together into one surface.

Here is a look at the Stitched surface with Translucency turned off. (Note: I have had some students have trouble stitching if it wont stitch undo the trims and trim in a different order.)This surface will be used for a complex split between solids. Turn the Solid body visibility back on.

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Use the stitched surface as a Split Tool and select the option for Split Solid. This will give us two solid bodies. Turn off the visibility of the stitched surface.

Turn off the front solid and Shell the back solid removing the face shown. Set the Thickness to 2 mm. (Tip: Remember earlier we offset the first surface to 2.2mm. This will give us some clearance between parts.)

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Turn on the visibility of the XY Plane. Do another Split using the XY Plane as the Split tool, this time you will need to select the back half solid as the solid to split. You now have 3 Solid Bodies in the file. Turn off the visibility of the workplane.

Turn off the visibility of the two back handle solids and turn on the visibility of the front nose solid. Shell to 2mm Thickness removing the 3 faces shown (one face on front other side from view).

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Drag the EOP down below the Grill sketch and then select Grill from the Plastic Part tab. Select the boundary and set the dimensions as shown.

Select the Island tab and select the circle shown.

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Select the Rib tab and then select the three arcs in the sketch as ribs. Set the dimensions as shown. Notice that by expanding the dialog box you can see the resulting Flow Area.

Mirror the Grill feature to the other solid using the XY Plane. Note that you have to explicitly select the other solid.

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Pull the EOP down to show the Boss Sketch. From the Plastic Part tools select Boss and make the changes shown on the Ribs tab.

Right mouse click on the Boss Sketch and select Share Sketch. Change the output to the threaded side and select OK. Save the file.

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In the Solid Bodies folder at the top of the browser rename the 3 solid bodies as shown.

From the Manage tab select Make Part and select the Handle-Left (we could select Make Components, but we will concentrate on only this one part).

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Double check your Project if you didnt set it earlier. With the Vacuum project active click on the edit Content Center Libraries icon lower right corner of the dialog box. Make sure the Mold libraries are loaded in your project.

Start a new Mold Design.iam file. Save it with the name Handle-Left Mold.iam.

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Place Plastic Part and then click Adjust Orientation to make sure the opening direction is as shown. Select Material and select OK to whatever the default material is (or change it if you like we can change it at any time.)

Set the Gate Location to the corner as shown (We can change the location later.) Apply and Done. Click Part Process Settings and select OK to the defaults (we can change these later). We will not run Fill Analysis or Part Shrinkage at this time (we can run those later).

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Select Define Workpiece Setting and accept the default size. (We can change that later. Get the idea, we can edit all of this stuff as needed.)

Create Patching Surface by selecting the automatic creation. Inventor patches all of the holes except for the Grill feature holes. Tutorial 14 Multi-body and Mold Tooling JD Mather 20

Select Create Patching Surface again and this time instead of Automatic creation select Click to Add and select boundaries of one of the openings in the Grill. (It might be easiest to follow this tutorial if you set the Visual Style to show edges.) Notice that the patch isnt created. We will have to try something else. Cancel the operation.

In the browser right click on Handle-Left and select Edit Component. (Very Important Note: This is not the Handle-Left file we created earlier. This is a Derived Component created by Inventor Tooling to compensate for part Shrinkage.) It took me a while to figure this out as I was trying to edit the original file that I still had open. The next few steps will only work on the Tooling derived plastic part.

Delete Face with the Heal option the inside face of the grill. Notice that with edge display turned on that all of the edge lines between the grill and the curved face are removed. This is now one face. Click Return in the upper right corner of the screen to return to the assembly.

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Note the difference between this image and the previous image.

Click to add and select the boundaries for the patches (you need to Click to add after each boundary). I have had trouble with some boundaries not creating patches so Im going to show another technique for the boundary I left open. (If you try to create a patch and it fails you can select the patch in the list and then hit Delete on the keyboard.) Select OK for the patches we created.

Right click on the plastic part in the browser and select Edit Part again. Start the Boundary Patch command and select the boundary. Select OK and Return to get back to the assembly.

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Select Use Existing Surface and select the Boundary Patch we just created. Make sure the Output is on Patching Surface. This will convert our Boundary Patch to a Patching Surface.

Select the Create Runoff Surface and select the automatic creation icon. Click OK.

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From the pull-down under Extrude Runoff Surface select Radiate Runoff Surface.

Select the edge shown. Note the direction of X and Y axis. Note the Start Point is filled. Change the Start to Y Direction and flip the arrow as shown. Click Apply.

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Repeat for the other side. Click Apply.

Repeat for the remaining two runoff surfaces.

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Select the Generate Core and Cavity and OK.

The original model for this tutorial was from a tutorial supplied by M2 Technologies. http://www.m2t.com/ The original tutorial was adapted to update for multi-body solids and Inventor Tooling functionality.

JD Mather jmather@pct.edu

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