With the rapid development of industries such as automobiles, motorcycles, and home appliances in China, the appearance of industrial products has become increasingly complex while meeting performance requirements. The manufacturing of these products cannot do without die-casting molds, which requires the die-casting mold manufacturing industry to comprehensively consider the three factors of speed, cost, and quality to produce molds.

In order to meet the above requirements, die-casting mold enterprises can only remain invincible in the fierce market competition by utilizing advanced management methods and CAD/CAM integrated manufacturing technology.

We have extracted some insights from the design and manufacturing of die-casting molds when applying Pro/ENGINEER software tools.

The key to the integration of CAD/CAE/CAM systems is to establish a single graphic database, which enables automatic data transfer and conversion between CAD, CAE, and CAM units, allowing the CAM and CAE stages to fully absorb the 3D graphics of the CAD stage, reducing the time and errors of intermediate modeling; With the help of computer, the mold performance, mold structure, processing accuracy, the flow of metal liquid in the mold and the temperature distribution in the mold working process are repeatedly modified and optimized. The problem is found before the formal production, which greatly shortens the time for making the die casting mold and improves the processing accuracy of the high-pressure casting mold.

Pro/ENGINEER software adopts an object-oriented unified database and parameterized modeling technology, with functions of conceptual design, basic design, and detailed design, providing an excellent platform for integrated manufacturing of molds.

Mold is an order oriented production method that belongs to single production, with complex manufacturing processes and short delivery times required. If we use CAD and CAM unit technology to manufacture die-casting molds, the manufacturing accuracy is low and the cycle is long. To solve the above problems, we will introduce concurrent engineering technology into the die-casting mold manufacturing process.

The so-called concurrent engineering refers to the design engineer considering the molding process of the mold and factors that affect the lifespan of the mold when designing three-dimensional parts of the product, and conducting proofreading and inspection to detect errors in the design process in advance. After the preliminary establishment of the three-dimensional model of the product, multiple engineers from the design, manufacturing, and auxiliary analysis departments simultaneously carry out mold structure design, engineering detail design, mold performance auxiliary analysis, and programming of CNC machine tool processing instructions. Moreover, each engineer's modifications to the product can be automatically reflected to other engineers, greatly reducing the time for design and CNC programming.

In the actual production process, using Pro/ENGINEER software, we have changed the serial process route of die casting mold structure design → 2D design of mold cavity and core → process preparation → 3D modeling of mold cavity and core design → CNC machining instruction programming → CNC machining to a parallel route where different engineers simultaneously design and prepare the process. This not only improves the manufacturing accuracy of the mold, but also shortens the design CNC programming time reaches over 40%.

The key to implementing concurrent engineering is to achieve the sharing of 3D graphic data of parts, so that the graphic data used by each engineer is absolutely the same, and the modifications made by each engineer are automatically reflected to other relevant engineers, ensuring data consistency and reliability. The single database and parameterized solid feature modeling technology of Pro/ENGINEER software provide reliable technical guarantees for implementing concurrent engineering.

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