Product Development Support for Suppliers of Forgings

Abstract This paper describes software tools which were developed at the Institute for Metal Forming and Metal Forming Machine Tools at the University of Hanover, Germany (IFUM) as add-ons for the CAD system Pro/ENGINEER. The software tools support the entire forging design process from the rough design to the finished part. It is now possible to use information on the functionality of the product for forging design instead of technical drawings or conventional CAD models. The described approach supports the migration of the product development from the customer to the supplier. The use of FEM for the load simulation and the PRINZ simulation tool (also developed by IFUM), which calculates and visualizes the material flow during the forming process, are also described.