Plastic Part and Mold Design + CAE Simulation & Digital Twin for Plastic Parts — Combined Program

Seminar Overview

This combined program delivers Plastic Part and Mold Design and CAE Simulation & Digital Twin for Plastic Parts in one integrated 4-day format: the design methodology first, the analytical layer second, with the crossover points — how design decisions drive the analysis, and how analysis results feed back into the design — taught explicitly.

Part and mold design is where most plastics failures are born — not in the press, not in the material, but in a decision made weeks before the first shot was ever packed. This core seminar is built from the industry's primary design references: the **Covestro Part and Mold Design Guide**, the resin-producer molding and design guides from **BASF (Ultramid processing and engineering properties)** and **DuPont (Delrin, Crastin, Zytel, and Minlon molding guides)**, the **Victrex PEEK injection and compression molding guides**, the **British Plastics Federation (BPF) design guides**, the **Parker O-Ring Handbook** where sealing interfaces meet part design, and the **Loctite Design Guide for Bonding Plastics** where assembly joins it — together with a dedicated process-science module drawn from the **RJG molding process science** corpus. Design reviews that only look at geometry are reviewing history; this seminar teaches the simulation layer that predicts behavior before tooling. Built on practitioner experience with Moldflow, Abaqus, structural FEA, and digital-twins, this course covers process simulation (warpage, filling, cooling), structural FEA of plastics (including viscoelastic and time-dependent behavior), and how to build a living digital-twin model of a part that bridges manufacturing outcomes to field performance. The output is a validation workflow your engineers can run on any new design.

Ideal Learner

• Product and mechanical engineers designing injection-molded plastic parts
• Mold designers, tooling engineers, and mold-making project managers
• Plastics processing engineers and molding supervisors who must debug part quality at the press
• CAE and simulation engineers specializing in plastics
• Design engineers who direct or interpret simulation work
• Product engineers validating parts for load, warpage, and durability

Learning Objectives

• Apply a structured part design methodology — function first, material second, feature rules third — to a new or existing molded part
• Set draft angles, nominal wall thickness, radii, rib and boss geometry correctly for crystalline vs. amorphous resins, including glass-filled behavior
• Select and locate gate types, size runners and sprues, and predict where sink, weld lines, and warpage will appear on the part
• Run and interpret injection-molding process simulation for warpage, filling, and cooling
• Apply structural FEA to plastic parts with correct material models (including time-dependent)
• Couple process-induced residual stress to structural performance

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.