Materialise

A digital approach to conformal cooling

The only limit is your imagination

Lieve Boeykens - Product manager 3-matic

Digital signalDigital signal

Traditional CADTraditional CAD Digital CADDigital CAD

Analogue signalAnalogue signal

Analogy between the worlds of electronics and CAD

Traditional vs. Digital CAD

SurfacesSurfaces

Many entitiesMany entities

Continuous descriptionContinuous description

AnalogueAnalogue

Points / Points / voxelsvoxels

1 entity1 entity

Discrete descriptionDiscrete description

DigitalDigital

Analogue Flow

Conversion steps needed to obtain your goal

Digital Flow

Complete Digital chain avoids conversion steps

Examples of Digital CAD

Simple entities (triangles) alloweasier storage and calculationsprocessing and manipulation of complex geometriesdesign automation huge reduction of time and errors during design

– examples:

Automatic support generationAutomatic support generation

Automatic tool designAutomatic tool design

Automatic drill guide generationAutomatic drill guide generation

Digital Design for conformal cooling

Advantages3-matic can draw cooling channels

At a fixed distance of the surfaceIn 15 minutesAny freeform shapes but in an ‘engineered’ way

Designing principles

The cavities are hollowed to generate a surface with a fixed distance of the surface

The centerlines will be positioned on this surfaceA circular sweep generates the cooling channel

Designing principles

Designing principles

Designing principles

Designing principles

Designing principles

Designing principles

Improvements for the future

Variable distance to the surface to give more support to hot spot – based on user input or analysis

More tools to create curves

Macro’s

Conclusion

3-matic is the only available method for accurately and easily producing conformal cooling channels for DirectTool, the manufacturing process allowing freedom of design and optimizing tool performance.

The only limit to the design of these curves is your own imagination.