Intelligent Support System for the Design of Injection Moulds

SUMMARY This article describes an intelligent support system for the design of injection moulds. It integrates a commercial computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacture (CAD/ CAM) system, a relational database and an expert system. The rule-based approach makes it very easy to tailor the software to the specific design rules of a particular company. As well as knowledge (rules) to select various standard mould components, the system is able to support the design of non-standard components, such as slides and inserts. The system works in a very interactive way and its great flexibility makes it a powerful tool to create an initial design of a mould in a very short time. Using a neutral CAD programming interface, it can be integrated with a number of commercial CAD systems currently available on the market.