Sustainable Designs helps develop Profitable Products - A SolidWorks Initiative

Sustainability Xpress could not have been released, by SolidWorks Corporation, at a better time, with the world looking at Initiatives to address Global Warming, Reducing Greenhouse Gases and Carbon Footprint. A simple add-in inside SolidWorks, it helps Designers understand the impact of their designs on environment early in the design stage.

In terms of recent economic downturn how do sustainable designs result in higher profit, larger market share and improved sales for engineered products? Sustainable designs need to have Conservation as the central theme. Conservation of:

• Material
• Energy
• Resources

Conservation of Material helps lower cost of raw material used, select material that can be recycled and evaluate alternate materials that are eco-friendly. These objectives align perfectly with the cost reduction objectives of any organization that intends to remain competitive.

Conservation of Energy focuses on Energy used to produce a product as well as energy consumed by the product during its life. By integrating features in a design to reduce manufacturing stages, energy conservation starts getting addressed. Similarly by evaluating alternate methods of manufacture (such as die casting, sand casting, forging among others) not only energy consumption gets the focus it needs, cost-effectiveness also gets evaluated. This necessarily helps reduce product development costs as well. Efficient designs result in energy savings for the consumer - a USP for the product in terms of market acceptance. Again, this finds favour with energy conscious society across the world. Imagine what, a 10% energy savings in a pump used in agricultural application, can do in terms of energy consumption - the focal point in global warming.

Needless to say, initiatives in Energy conservation helps reduce input cost, increases profitability and market share as well !

Conservation of Resources is a conscious effort requiring attention in every organization to stay competitive. In addition to lowering operating costs, resource conservation in air, water and land helps reduce carbon footprint while preserving the eco-system for future generations.

SolidWorks has raised the bar, once again, when it comes to developing eco-friendly designs for a greener earth. By introducing the ability to evaluate Carbon Footprint, Environmental Impact, Water Eutrophication, Air Acidity and Energy Consumption the ability to develop greener design has become a reality.

Other contemporary CAD software should take the example of SolidWorks in enabling designers develop products with a conscientious effort to help sustain a healthy eco-system - a Social Responsibility that protects the Wealth of future generations.

Let us take the example of a flanged-shaft design as shown in the picture below:

If we look at the design in terms of a sustainable product following aspects come to mind:

• Reduce the number of fasteners
• Alternate Materials considering processing cost and re-use
• Manufacturing process with least energy consumption
• Integration of features for lesser number of manufacturing stages.

The options available are endless. Every one of them leads to a cost-effective design with one difference - Corporate Social Responsibility of a Sustaining Eco-system !

Sustainability Xpress shows the difference between Hot-rolled Steel bar and Normalized Steel bar just in material selection.

What do organizations look for in terms of profitability, increasing market share and cost savings? Weight reduction, VAVE ( Value Addition Value Engineering ), BOM reduction, Optimization and above all reliability.

Sustainable design have complete convergence with Corporate goals for higher growth. In addition to providing for ways and means to reduce costs, it helps designers achieve a sense of satisfaction of having made their contribution for a greener earth - a new experience indeed. Another perspective in Design Validation for a Greener Earth - a small but surely a firm step in the right direction.

Simulation - Cure all for beleagured engineering enterprises?

In these days of economic challenges, companies are forced to look at ways and means of reducing costs to survive and stay profitable. Some of the immediate priorities that need urgent management focus include:

1. How to reduce product cost to sustain healthy margins?
2. How to innovate and deliver products of high value without compromising on safety?
3. How to increase an already shrinking market share?
4. How to eliminate warranty costs, product recall and re-work?

The questions are unending. This is just a partial list. The answers just do not seem to be there.

A careful analysis of all the questions, posed above, provides a common denominator - Design

Product cost is dictated by the Bill of Materials and Drawings. Innovation and USP of a product is driven by product function and efficiencies. Increasing market share is directly related to selling better products of higher value at affordable (read not lower) cost. Warranty issues, recall and re-work relate to product not functioning as intended. All these lead to one common cause - Design, provided the product has been manufactured to specifications provided.

It is well known, without contention, that upto 85% of product cost is influenced by design. Then it would be prudent, on the part of every company that is looking at ways and means to stay profitable, to scrutinize the design process and revisit existing designs to achieve higher levels of efficiency, profitability and success.

If the design teams were to be able to arrive at innovative designs by evaluating a variety of design concepts, validating the same using simulation tools, optimizing designs for least cost and releasing drawings incorporating functional tolerances that meet intended functions, the challenges mentioned in the beginning of this article get addressed with higher levels of reliability, confidence and perfection.

Simulation tools in design are of 3 types. They are:

• Finite Element Analysis & Fluid Flow computations
• Kinematic Analysis for Mechanisms
• Tolerance Analysis for Stack-up calculations - Synthesis and Analysis of Tolerancing strategies for cost-effective design

CAD Integrated FE analysis and CFD computations are commonplace these days. In addition to overcoming the data translation issues found with standalone simulation tools, optimization of designs based on parametric CAD dimensions as design variables provides the design engineer with a rich set of options to quickly arrive at functional, failsafe designs.

Shaft Failure - Case Study of Warranty Problem

Above is a case study of a shaft failure, done using SolidWorks Simulation, that could have been avoided if a simple life calculation had been performed. Not only is it expensive to replace during warranty period, but time and efforts spent in getting it identified and corrected, leads to unplanned expenditure. Needless to say the company image takes a beating where the damages are incalculable.

Another example of a design gone wrong is shown below.

Case study of a Product Recall

Failure due to improper calculation of loads and stresses lead to a correction on the plastic mould. The product was re-designed for better strength, as shown in the SolidWorks Simulation design above, with a higher factor of safety. The product recall costs are staggering in addition to creation of a huge pile of inventory of parts that cannot be re-used.

Efficiency of a cyclone separator was drastically improved, at the design stage, by performing integrated CFD, as shown below in the FloWorks model. By validating early in the design process, a near-optimal cost effective design was possible for chosen configuration. Particle tracking helped understand bottlenecks such as re-circulation in addition to pressure drop calculations.

Case Study of Optimal Design: Flow Simulation of a Cyclone separator

Innovative Designs can lead to creation of a new market for products that have never been explored. In addition to creating a market share, sans competition, it helps leverage better sales for companies, resulting in increased profits.

Tolerance Analysis can help save money for any manufacturing engineering enterprise by allocating required tolerance to meet design function while minimizing costs.
Tolerance Stack-up Analysis/ Synthesis using SigmundWorks inside SolidWorks

Benefits of Simulation are many-fold. Some of the important ones are:

• Do it Once – Do it Right
• Give the Best to the Organization
• Profit on Day One of Product Launch
• Valuefacture – Eliminates Competition
• Save our Planet

GD & T - Power of Feature Control Frames using SolidWorks

Feature Control Frame forms the heart of the Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing ( GD & T ) practice for engineers involved in creating, manufacturing and inspecting designs. In fact it is the greatest invention of engineering expressions in symbolic language that it is finding unilateral acceptance by the engineering community as a whole.

For the un-initiated, let us considere a hole dimensioned as follows:
Read from left to right, the Feature Control Frame states that "Position of the Axis of a pattern of 8 holes when produced within stated size limits, can be off-centre within a diametral tolerance zone of 0.50 when produced at Maximum Material Condition, when the part is located on Datum A as Primary, Datum Feature of Size B when produced at Maximum Material Condition as Secondary and Datum C as Tertiary references."

Feature Control Frames have a characteristic symbol in the first cell, a tolerance value with a zone descriptor and material modifier (if any) as the second cell followed by cells having Datum references ranging from 1 to 3 depending on the design specification that the tolerance definition is intended to convey. Number of datums depend and possible material modifiers (on datum features of sizes) depends on the intention and feature that is controlled.

Many a times, design intent and design specifications are wrongly used interchangeably while producing drawings. GD & T Drawing is intended to convey design specifications in an unambiguous manner and not the design intent. Sounds strange? Read again !

GD & T symbols, when used with care and purpose, have been proven to reduce costs and greatly improve quality while ensuring part interchangeability and protecting the parts' intended fit, form and functions.

SolidWorks helps designers achieve a great level of definition control with GD & T using DimXpert. Even Imported geometries can have the complete Dimensional schematic completed in no time with accurate representation of the design specifications.

Feature Control Frame Definition using DimXpert

User specified Datums with selected order of precedence alongside features of sizes can be defined for various levels of control based on size, form, orientation and location. Features defined using feature control frame are ascertained for completeness of definition. Features shown as green are complete in dimensional definition. If the feature selected is a part of a pattern of features, say a hole pattern, then a common reference frame with necessary number of features are provided automatically.

Using SolidWorks, this is possible even in the case of imported geometries as shown. This approach enhances accuracy and adequacy, when dimensioning a part with a huge history of features requiring dimensioning.

When a circular feature of size, such as Datum B shown in the Figure, is selected as a datum for another feature, the feature dimensioning is automatically defined in all aspects with appropriate Feature control frame (in this case Perpendicularity) in context to the datum feature used (in this case Datum A) in precedence. This approach, not only saves time, but also ensures dimensional completeness thereby preventing ambiguity in manufacturing and inspection downstream during part manufacture.

Hole depth is also indicated in the Feature Control Frame while defining size limits. Tolerances specified as based on default values specified by the user that can be modified based on cost and practical manufacturing considerations (including machine Cp and Cpk).

When multiple features refer to the same Datum, this is automatically recognized by SolidWorks and common Datum sequence is followed in all relevant Feature Control Frames, signifying a single setting during manufacture and inspection.

In summary, DimXpert inside SolidWorks reduces effort required to develop GD & T drawings while improving accuracy of representation and completeness in definition. This eliminates ambiguity, resulting in overall cost and time savings.