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Casting - Sand

Geometry or Cost Engine Changes that Could Impact Configured Digital Factories

The following changes might impact costing, even for Digital Factories that use earlier cost model versions.

  • Thickness Near Toroidal Surfaces (can impact process feasibility, routing, and design guidance): This release improves the algorithm used to determine part thickness for parts with toroidal surfaces, that is, parts with features that are shaped like a portion of a doughnut's surface. The previous release's algorithm was sometimes inaccurate regarding part thickness near such features. The change generally has a very minor impact on thickness values.

Bug Fixes or Small Improvements to Prior Cost Model Versions

The following changes might impact costing for Digital Factories that use earlier cost model versions.

  • NO IMPACT

Cost Model Changes that Do Not Affect Configured Digital Factories

The following changes do not affect costings with Digital Factories that use earlier cost model versions. The changes are available only in the latest cost model version.

  • Sand and Additive Costs (impacts Expendable Tooling and Additional Direct Costs): The following changes affect sand and additive costs:

    • In the previous release, sand unit costs were stored in the lookup table tblSand. In this release sand costs have been updated, and they are now stored in the tool shops for the moldmaking and coremaking processes. The update to sand costs impacts Expendable Tooling costs.
    • In the previous release, metal additive unit costs were stored in the lookup table tblMetalAdditives. In this release metal additive costs have been updated, and they are now stored in the tool shop for the Melting process. The update to metal additive costs impacts Additional Direct Costs.
    • This release also updates sand additive unit costs in the lookup table tblSandAdditives. The update impacts Expendable Tooling costs.

    These changes increased fully-burdened cost by an average of around 2% for the parts in a test set. The maximum increase observed was around 16%.

  • Refractory Coating (impacts Additional Direct Costs): In the previous release, the coating used in Mold Refractory Coating and Core Refractory Coating was assumed to cost $2.48/L in all cases. In this release, the user can specify either water-based coating ($1.00/L, the default in starting point Digital Factories) or spirit-based coating ($6.39/L).

    The coating costs are specified in the Mold Refractory Coating and Core Refractory Coating tool shops. The default coating type is specified by the cost model variable defaultRefractoryBaseLiquid. Users can override the default on a per-part basis with the Refractory Base Liquid setup option provided by the Refractory Coat Mold and Refractory Coat Cores nodes in the Process Options Editor.

    In a set of test parts, with default settings, fully-burdened cost decreased by around 4% compared to the previous release.