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The molds inexorably wear out, get over it!

Especially in die casting with the increasing use of alloys for structural castings, which are very aggressive towards steel. In this study we show the results of a work carried out for one of our customers to reduce mold erosion thanks to the redesign of the gating. Thanks to the changes introduced between one maintenance and the next, they passed from the 2,000 shots of before to over 25,000 shots!

How much did it cost? Let’s talk about it… if you need to order a following new mold or just new inserts, don’t be satisfied with making a simple copy/paste of the existing design, we can introduce this and many other improvements… included in the cost. Next time think about it, think about FORMSTAMPI!

Read the full study here:

This work was presented by FORMSTAMPI at the Flow3d European User Meeting held in Madrid in June 2013. The aim was to fine-tune the parameters and computational models that influence the prediction of shrinkage porosity formation. It was particularly interesting to simulate the behavior of the Squeeze-pin. In addition, the study shows how the presence of air trapped in the metal after filling influences the formation of shrinkage cavities during solidification.

In high pressure die casting, where speed of the melt during die filling is very high, cavitation is one of the major causes of die erosion. FORMSTAMPI as a mold producer is sensible to this problem and decided to go deeper in the analysis of a real case where cavitation leads to premature die erosion. The cavitation model of Flow3d-cast was used to analyze this phenomenon. Then a solution was introduced by changing the geometry of the gate and tested in production. This work has been presented by FORMSTAMPI in Krakow, at the Flow3D European User Meetings 2016.

Sooner or later you know that cracks will appear on the mold and then you’ll have to repair it with a consequent waste of time and money. What if it were possible to postpone this inevitable event as much as possible?

Here then at FORMSTAMPI we have developed a predictive calculation model of mold life. Using the information obtained from the casting simulation and the properties of the steel used, we can conduct structural simulations to accurately analyze the internal stresses and therefore the fatigue failure of the steel. This model is very useful for optimizing the design with the aim of extending the tool service life.

For more information, please refer to the presentation below.

The mold design process is often a long and laborious process and sometimes it becomes a race against time as delivery deadlines are increasingly shorter.

This involves, at some point, the freezing of the design due to lack of time and by this way the final result is always a compromise.

Thanks to the advent of Artificial Intelligence some design processes can be automated with consequent time savings.

This is a real optimization that leads to definitely better results than in the traditional process.

In particular at FORMSTAMPI we have been testing for several months a software that has just been released on the market, IMPROVEit (XC Engineering, later incorporated into Flow-3D).

It interfaces with the software used in our technical department, in particular Creo5 (PTC) and FLOW-3D® CAST (Flow Science inc.).

Our goal is the optimization of the casting systems for our molds, pursued by acting on the geometric parameters to minimize the defects resulting from the casting simulation.

Thanks to this software our workflow given by the iteration
1) process simulation
2) interpretation of the results and
3) geometry modification was automated, making it possible to perform over 20 casting simulations during a weekend to arrive on Monday morning with the best solution found.

Below you can read the presentation we brought to the FLOW-3D – European User Conference 2019 and which here won the BEST PRESENTATION AWARD. You can also find here the article published in “Fonderia Pressofusione” made with XC Engineering (Italian language only available).

Thanks to the cooperation with Texer Design S.r.l. we have now gained good experience in the use of 3D printed inserts with conditioning circuits conformed to the cavity and we have collected important results. In this case study with more efficient cooling we’ve solved soldering problems and reduced the cycle time by 10%. Read the full study here: