Injection mold simulation has become a standard tool for molders and mold designers.

Seamless integration with CAD and FEA structural analysis is a common theme among the major software products.

WEB EXCLUSIVE A new affordable, high-end injection molding 3D simulation software package has been fully integrated with surface and solid modeling tools, a mold-design package, comprehensive 2- to 5-axis machining with high-speed routines, and 2- and 4-axis EDM.

Injection MoldingHybrid Press Has Electric ClampNew injection presses that combine servo-electric and hydraulic movements to achieve high performance with energy efficiency will be discussed by Arburg Inc., Newington, Conn.

Software suppliers agree that 3D simulation of injection mold filling, packing, cooling, shrinkage, and warpage is fairly mature.

Specially tailored packages of 3D computer-aided design software have been available to injection mold designers for at least a decade.

New developments in 3D simulation can handle processes like gas assist, coinjection, and multi-shot molding and add features like birefringence prediction.

VISI-Design represents the fifth generation of CAD software developed by a programming team that has maintained its objective of providing practical and productive aids for the mechanical design engineer.

VISI-Flow combines in a revolutionary way the precision of the most advanced simulations with very short time for the preparation of the FEM model and the subsequent calculation.

VISI-MACHINING 2D: Integrated 2D Design and Machining provides the necessary design and machining tools for 2D milling, pocketing with islands, profiling and complex machining cycles for all drilling strategies on wireframe geometry.

VISI-Modeling integrates both solids and surface modeling environments in a friendly and complete approach to 3D design.

VISI-Mold provides the mold tool designer with a fast and accurate method of designing and visualizing mold tool assemblies.

VISI-Reverse imports any type of polygon-mesh data and, using sophisticated tools, acquires all the information needed for building a CAD model: edges, vertices, rounds, curves, surfaces.

Vero International Software Inc., Wixom, Mich., supplier of the VISI-Series CAD/CAM/CAE software package, has acquired Plastics & Computer Inc. of Milan, Italy (U.S. office in Dallas). Headed by Giorgio Bertacchi, Plastics & Computer was a 25-year-old supplier of the TMconcept series of injection molding simulation programs.

Injection mold design is in the midst of a second computer revolution.