A study on development of a die design system for diecasting

Diecasting is one of the forming methods for manufacturing a large number of products with short lead time and a good surface by high injection pressure of cast alloy. Die design is composed of selection of cast alloy, design of product, runner and gate design, etc. In reality, however, die design for diecasting has been performed by a trial and error method, which causes economic and time loss. This paper describes the development of the computer-aided design of product and die design. The CAD system has been written in AutoLISP on the AutoCAD with a personal computer. In this study, the die design system for the die casting process has been developed and a flowchart is presented for the automation of die design, especially of the runner-gate system. As the generation process and die design system using 3D geometry handling are integrated with the technology of process planning, die design can be automated. In addition, specific rules and equations for the runner-gate system have been presented to avoid too much trial and error with expensive equipment. It is thus possible for engineers to make automatic and efficient die design for diecasting which will result in a reduction of the required cost and time. An example of a cap-shaped product, i.e. a motor pulley, is given using the proposed flowchart.