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Mykrolis Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Millipore Corporation, creates products that purify the liquids and gases used in the manufacture of semiconductor chips and devices. Mykrolis offers the broadest range of processing technologies, including filtration, purification, dispense, flow, pressure, and vacuum control. Markets served include the semiconductor industry as well as the high-technology areas of flat panel displays, optical disc manufacturing, and other related cutting-edge technologies. Product Development Engineer David Stockbower spoke with SolidWorks Express recently about the impact of using Moldflow Part Adviser™ to increase efficiencies in the R&D group.
Why does Mykrolis need a tool like Moldflow Part Adviser?
"As with many high tech companies, Mykrolis utilizes an internal R&D group to engineer most of its products. For the liquids contamination and control business, most products are molded thermoplastics. Since purity, cleanliness, and chemical resistance are particularly important for chemical handling, fluoroplastics are often chosen. Also, the continual decrease in OEM equipment size has required that design geometries have a higher feature density. The inherently high cost of fluoroplastics material and the difficulty in molding complex geometries make the Moldflow Part Adviser a good tool for the design engineer."
What were you using before the Moldflow Part Adviser and what were the limitations?
"Prior to using the Moldflow Part Adviser, the design engineer would rely on the expertise of a small group of geographically diverse professionals with years of industry experience. Occasionally, when mold-filling analyses were completed, they were subcontracted out at a high cost to distant vendors - which created difficulty in communicating the analyses requirements and results. These inefficiencies lengthened product development times and caused designs to be less than optimal."
Why is the single-window integration with SolidWorks an important benefit to your design process?
"Single-window integration between SolidWorks® software and the Moldflow Part Adviser add-on solution allows the product development engineer to quickly evaluate designs without model translation errors. Further, this integration allows the user to work in a familiar environment without concern about learning additional commands in the secondary software user interface that duplicates the native SolidWorks user interface. As a result, it is easy to verify that the analysis results were not completed on an out-of-date model. The relative speed at which the analysis runs ensures that the result information delivered to the engineers enables them to use this information to make design changes and discuss the impact of a feature set with the molding and tooling organizations."
Provide an example using Moldflow Part Adviser.
"In a recent project, the use of the Moldflow Part Adviser helped Mykrolis solve a weld line problem in a polyolefin part. The part was originally produced in an aluminum prototype tool with a center sprue gate, and the inside diameter of the three top ports had a tight dimensional and roundness tolerance as this feature forms a fluid tight radial seal with a mating part. In response to a reported leak, an investigation was initiated on the effect of the weld line on seal failure. Concurrently, the prototype tool was being replaced with a steel tool that was being designed with an edge tab gate to lower secondary machining costs.
"After choosing a linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) with a similar Melt Flow Index (MFI) out of the Moldflow material database, an analysis was completed on the original model to verify that the gate location was accurate (see figures below). Next, an analysis was completed with the new gate location to determine the location of the weld lines. Although the weld lines were unavoidable, the temperature at the location of each weld line was uniform, thereby strengthening the weld line and minimizing the depth of the weld line on the sealing surface."
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| Original model with center gate location |
Revised model with edge gate to strengthen the weld line |
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