CAST-DESIGNER

Upfront design & analysis system for die casting

30 minuts

{
to design one gating system

1 hour to validate a design solution

1 day to compare 4 to 5 solutions

Integration of expert system and CAE technology

Casting Part A tailor-designed mould planning & simulation system for die casting industry

Cast-Designer is a quick casting design and

Design #1

analysis tool based on upfront design &

analysis technology. The core of the
“upfront design & analysis technology” is to
allow engineers to conduct fluid flow, heat
20 min 55 min transfer and solidification analysis by the
assistance of combination of expert system
Filling & Solidification Result
and CAE technology, it helps engineers to
make a “Right” engineering decision in the
early design stage of a project. Upfront
design & analysis technology has already
Design #2

been becoming a very important role in

main stream design process.

With Cast-Designer, users can optimize a

20 min 50 min casting design by detecting the part
features with potential flow and
Filling & Solidification Result
solidification problems, evaluating gate
system and overflow design alternatives in
the early design stage. Even a novel with
limited experience in simulation who can
easier to undertake the design setup in very
Design #3

short period of time. In other word, Cast-

Designer can help the industry to achieve
the target of 'Time to Market'.

20 min 70 min
Filling & Solidification Result

CAST-DESIGNER helps engineers to quickly convert ideas into 3D CAD solid model,
and subsequently evaluate the casting design. According to the result of the CPI
analysis, engineers can make critical modifications and easily achieve a satisfactory
design solution.

C3P Engineering Software International All Rights Reserved 2013

CAST-DESIGNER, FORM-ADVISOR,GEO-DESIGNER, STAMP-ENGINEER, CAST-ENGINEER, is a trademark of C3P Engineering
Software International Co.,Limited. All other logos, trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
System module CAST-DESIGNER Basic
As a core component of Cast-Designer system, Cast-
Designer Basic is an efficient and flexible design tool
which assists designers to develop gating system for die
casting in very short time. With the help of Cast-
Designer, engineer can quickly convert a gating system
design idea becoming a 3D model for design evaluation.
Cast-Designer enable user easily to manage and alter
parameter for different stage whatever for initial
concept design stage, intermediate embodiment design
stage, or final design stage. It is possible to create the
full gating system including inner gates, gate runners,
runners, overflows as well as cooling and venting
Cast-Designer users interface, with last OpenCASCADE technology systems within tens minute to half hour for a typical
casting part.
CAST-DESIGNER CPI
Based on its unique innovative technology, Cast-Designer
CPI (Casting Process Insight) is the sole really practical tool
on the marketing today to support designer and engineer to
make fast decision for casting part and mould design. It is
capable to reflect varieties of dynamics and physical
behaviors of fluid flow, heat transfer and solidification in
details. Comparing with other traditional numerical
simulation, CPI is solely based on CAD environment, and
provides fast analysis results. The beauty of CPI is the full
couple with the design functions of Cast-Designer and
quickness to obtain the analysis results at the conceptual
design stage. There may be many alternative designs, a
quick tool is important to run all designs and remove the
poor designs.

Operation and Flow Char t of Gating System Design

Gating System Design

1 Casting Par t Fine Tunning
8 Design Advisor
Guiding designer carries out the design process in a simple way. Basing on the
Overflow, cooling and venting system

Pre-defined overflow types and size to

Alloy, mass, wall thickness
Quality requirement
mass or volume of casting as well as geometry and casting alloy type, the speed up overflow design
system can estimate the filling time automatically, and guide to select the Object manage concept to support multi-
casting machine correctly. It also can predict the 1st and 2nd speed, critical objects design
Design check, finished Support non-standard overflow design
shift point of cold chamber machine and calculate the final section areas for
inner gate, gate-runner, runner and sprue runner. All the number of gates and Cooling and venting channel can be
runners could be evaluated and adjusted in real time. generated basing on the pre-defined path

2 Gating/Overflow Sprue Runner

7
1 Inner Gate Design Sprue runner designer
line or curve with a flexible sections define.
Build in wizard to calculate the total length
and section area of cooling line to achieve
heat transfer balance
Mass
Calculate the inner gate area Support Cold and hot chamber
with design advisor machine as well as no sprue
Estimate the mass or vol, Type, Nbs & section area
runner design
Ratio of casting Piston diameter Online tips and wizards with
industrial know-how and Full parameterized and standard
experience design

3 Casting Machine Gate / Runner

6 Online evaluation tools
Suitable to inner gate with
complex geometry
Easily to customize

Select machine, locking force
Filling ratio, piston diameter
Design gate runner and runner,
Nbs & section area
(a) (b)
KBE guide the gating system design
Runner Design
(a) P-Q graphic to evaluate the flexibility of the system
(b) Gating system to control the metal speed and flow
Build in wizard to define flow path and section parameters quickly rate smoothly

4 Inner Gate Speed up Ratio

5 Support runner with fan, curve and tangent type
Generate feature sections in pre-defined curve or wire directly
Various styles in solid model generation
Take account of the efficiency of metal flow in runner design

Increase ratio of sprue Real time visualization for both 2D and 3D

Location, Nbs, section area
Runner: Gate runner: Inner gate
P-Q graphics Export design result in CAD section or Excel file format

Cast-Designer Gating System Design Proceeding

(a) (b)
Cast-Designer interface
(a) Gating system design wizard (b) Runner design interface
Humane Draft Design
One Button Gating System Design
Start design from draft paper and import to Cast-Designer in the
following image format
Support BMP, TIF or JPG format
Support both bitmap and vector formats, convert bitmap to
vector data automatically
Support DXF, IGES as input
Special designed tools for draft location and size adjustment

(a) (b) (c) Pre-defined gating template Design page and parameter table for gating system

Example of draft design for gating system
(a) original draft design (b) Import the draft design to Cast-Designer
and convert to vector data (c) The final gating system designed as draft
‘One button design’ is a new concept and function to design
gating system in express way. Base on the pre-defined gating
system template, the user can adjust the style and parameters in
the table list to generate a gating system in a few minutes. Both
the design time and work load could be reduced to minimum.
The main feature includes,
All design data are parametric and support user template.
3 pages for a full gate system
Support XML language for customization
Same data set as standard design environment, support unlimited
modifications and fine tunning
Designed data could be exported to CAD system
CAST-DESIGNER CPI for MCAD Automatically CAD surface fix and express meshing
With its unique technology, Cast-Designer CPI can fully
integrate CAE spectrum fluid flow analysis, heat
transfer and solidification with the customer's existing
MCAD user environment, which enable product and
mould designers involving to the design process
together and making engineering decision promptly
and simultaneously.

Simulation driven by CAD data: With the CPI in MCAD,

1 2 3
your CAD geometry can drive the simulation process.
(1) Since Cast-Designer V6.0, the mesh engine could generate a new CAD topology during the (3)(4), Local mesh provides a flexibly way to
When you make a design change in CAD system (such meshing process. With this technology, the CAD geometry will be restructured and repaired control the mesh size and minimum the CAE
as Creo, NX or Solidworks), you see the change in Cast- automatically, even if the small gap, face lose, overlays of face, or face intersection in the model.
Designer CPI in just a few seconds. It's as simple as original CAD data, the system will fix it automatically. (Red line was face lose in the image)
that. (2) The generated mesh model. All lost faces had been fixed automatically, the whole mesh
takes 3’30’’ in a standard desktop machine.
4
Using the ‘one button design’ Generate 3D mesh model in Cast-Designer CPI makes all
function, to design the gating ‘Fast mesh’. Cast-Designer setup in one window. The
system in Cast-Designer. supports many new powerful solver can make the
(8 min) technologies to get a perfect full couple simulation of
3D hexahedral mesh, such as thermal, flow and stress.
mult- objects, coarse mesh, (show flow color map, 45 min)
local mesh and advance
surface smoothing. (5 min)

Upfront Analysis
It is well known the traditional numerical
Best in Class of CPI
simulation is not applicable or very expensive for
the concept stage. The data to run a numerical
Solver Technology
simulation is usually not available yet, for example
runner geometry. Due to the complexity of the Base on Finite Element Method (FEM) technology
equation system to be solved, numerical Fluid flow calculations are described by the full Navier-Stokes equation and couple to
simulation is too time consuming, usually hours or thermal analysis
even days. Setup the simulation model is also a
heavy job. Simulate the physical phenomena and mechanical behavior of metal filling,
solidification and cooling process, such as temperature, velocity, pressure, liquid/solid
Cast-Designer do the best to make a balance on easily usage, robust and functions, the user can solve at least 80% factors etc.
industrial problems in an express and effective way.
Stress simulation for both thermal stress and mechanical stress. Full couple to thermal
and flow simulation.
Excellent Mesh Technology Innovation technology to speed up simulation in express, half hour to one half hour for
almost cases
Very fast and robust meshing, fully automatically Submit job to solver in directly and batch queue mode
Flexible to control the element size in different direction (X/Y/Z) Both 32 bits and 64 bits solvers, Windows and Linux
Support multi geometries, whatever faces/shell/solid objects, no Boolean
operation required before meshing, simple put geometry together
Model Setup
CAD or mesh or mixed CAD & mesh as original data
Only one windows page to setup casting process, boundary condition and control
Special treatment for CAD defects, such as geometry gap, overlay, intersection or parameters for flow, heat transfer and solidification simulation
unclose, face lose
With rich material data in database, casting and mould material could be selected from
Advance technology for tin dimension or complex region
database directly
Powerful local mesh function to control mesh size flexibly
Pre-defined template for die casting process, as well as user can define the process in
Advance mesh smoothing technology to catch the geometry feature free, such as piston velocity, pressure, mould size and HTC etc.
Fully automatic mould assembly with node connection, support mixture mesh All conditions and parameters could be save as template file for future usage
type, like tetrahedral mesh and hexahedral mesh together
Advance module to support speical die casting processes. Such as Thixocasting,
Mesh level Boolean operation for objects, sort objects priority order to extract Thixomolding, squeeze casting, vacuum die casting, local squeezing etc.
new objects from cavities
Result & Reporting
Introduce special customized ParaVIEW as post-processors. ParaVIEW is a famous
software and used widely, it is very powerful and flexible, special for huge model support
Rich analysis results in various formats, such as contours, vectors, sections and curves, it
is also support animation and VRML
Support plug-in filter for post-process, the similar concept like Photoshop
Mesh comparison of tradition Finite Different Mesh (left) with Cast-Designer CPI mesh (right) in the
same mesh size. Thanks to the coarse mesh and advance mesh smooth technology, CPI can make a best Analysis result like,
balance in mesh quality and numbers to match the casting geometry feature.
Defect tracking and air entrainment Shot sleeve optimization
Solidification & shrinkage Die erosion
Microporosity Stress, deformation and distrotion

Gate system Casting part Shrinkage defects

CPI mesh Flow analysis Solidification analysis & shrinkage defects

 Support Enterprises to Re-define the Competitiveness
Fast Cooling Analysis
Cooling system design is another very important task in
mould design. It will affect the solidification process and
result directly, such as the shrinkage porosity, stress and
distortion after casting. Also, the die life time and
production rate are related to cooling system directly.

However, once the mould was made out, it is very difficult

Gating system design and simulation for power tool part
to change the cooling channel anymore, a bad design will
Fast Cooling analysis in Cast-Designer
bring a permanent defects.

Numerical simulation can predict the affection of cooling system with mould, but it is too complex on
the modeling and setup, also expensive on CPU time. Use back the simulation result to design is
another job with skill. Cast-Designer brings a new concept to cooling system design and analysis, full
parametric design for cooling system, following a fast cooling system analysis to check the design
performance. Only a few minutes to get back result.

Stress and Distortions Simulation Gate color map for multi-gates Distortion of LCD frame (5X)

0.61mm 0.60mm

Dimension tolerance control of a communication part made by aluminum in Casting Flow mark and cold shot simulation & validation
The wall of the final part has a 0.60mm distortion (right),Cast-Designer stress can predict such distortion very well (left and middle).

Thanks to the FEM technology, Cast- Predict the high stress regions
Designer can make the full couple O b ta i n t h e ga p fo r m at i o n d u r i n g t h e r m o -
simulation of thermal, flow and stress mechanical calculation
together. The stress simulation includes Hot Tear and Cracking Identification
Dimensional Contraction and Distortion
both thermal stress and mechanical
Distortion compensation of the casting
stress. With the stress module, the Predict the stress distribution in the mould
user can achieve the following goals: Thermal fatigue sensitive areas in the mould
Bathroom products simulation Lamp cover design

Cast-Designer Software Packages and Modules

S tre s s
D e s ig n CPI F ull P a c k a g e
S /N C a s t-D e s ig ne r S o ftw a re M o d ule P a c k a g e fo r
P ackage P ackage fo r H P D C
1 HP D C

1 C as t-D es igner F ram e w ork w ith bas ic C A D func tions X X X X

2 S tandard gating s y s tem des ign X O X X

3 O ne button gate s y s tem des ign for H P D C O O O O

4 C as t-D es igner Tools : C as t-Zone X O X X Clutch part of automotive Engine part

C as t-D es igner C P I F ram e w ork (w ith m es hing, s etup,
5 O X X X
pos t-proc es s )

6 A dvanc e m es h as s em bly O O O O

7 C as t-D es igner C P I s tandard s olver (Therm al & F low ) O X X X

8 C as t-D es igner C P I s tres s s olver O O O X

9 P arallel vers ion (C P U /C ore depend) O O O O

10 E ngineering R eport G eneration Tools O O O O

11 G eo-D es igner for D F M A naly s is O O O O

X: available O: Option
Software language: English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean Simulation of full mould set Engine block in HPDC

About Us
With the combination of software development, advanced analysis, extensive product development
experience and cost effective local human resources, C3P Engineering Software International Co., Limited
Partnerships
provide industry and manufacturing business with comprehensive solutions and engineering services on a
global basis to meet their expectation in high quality, on-schedule delivery within cost target. Our business
scope covers software development, professional engineering service and application software integration.
More info please visit: www.c3p-group.com | www.cast-designer.com
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