3DQuickPress SolidWorks - 3D CAD/CAM Design Software

3DQUICKPRESS + SOLIDWORKS IN TOOLING INDUSTRIESResearch Tool & Die Works, Inc.MANUFACTURER OF MARINE ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS HARDWARE3DQuickPress helps RTD to increase productiverate by introducing a 3D design environment.Research Tool & Die Works (RT&D) is amanufacturing firm with over fifty yearsexperience in marine electrical systemshardware. Their modern plant in Carson, LosAngeles, California, serves as the corporateheadquarters and state of the artmanufacturing facility. It houses some of themost advanced fabrication equipmentavailable. RT&D provides competitive diedesign and metal stampings such as cabletrays, degaussing cable hangers, EMI Bondinghardware, light hangers, stuffing tubes, andmore.Kevin Perrault, Vice President of RT&D,acquired the 3DQuickPress software in April,2005. “Manufacturing in US and California hasdeclined a lot in the last ten years. With goodideas and experience in stamping, we continueto grow and expand our business coveragearound the world. Being a global player in themetal stamping industry, we have to be fast,accurate, and cost effective. We are using allpossible technologies to enable us to be fasterand better than our competition. Before Istarted working full-time at RT&D, the companyhad invested in SolidWorks software.In a testing period of six months, the tooldesigner learned how to use the software andtried to apply it in tool design jobs. Theintricacy of the software is good for partsdesign, but requires much more specializationto do die design. My goal is to use SolidWorksas a day-to-day design tool. 3D part filecommunication is emerging as a standardcommunication protocol between ourcustomers.SolidWorks is a good common interface, and touse it in the downstream application such astool design is our next logical step. If we keepon using the same approach without change,we will lose out. Speeding up the productiontime is not an option. We managed to completethis 2D to 3D transition in a year.” RT&D is afull service shop housing tooling, press, andproduct services departments, and a staff forceof over seventy. “In the stamping industry, theturnover rate is less than four years. Most ofour staff have been working at RT&D overtwelve years and many of them have beenhere for over twenty years.Machinists in CNC workshop.“Our experience and modern manufacturingtechnologies are the foundations of oursuccess. We started to use Mazak fifteen yearsago. Since that time, we have kept the steadyincrease of CNC machines in terms of numberand precision. To optimize our labor cost, weincreased the use of progressive stampingsmany years ago. Today, my die design iscreated 100% as 3D and we are in a muchbetter position in utilizing our CNC machines.Our next step is to promote the 3D tool designapproach to all our tool designers. I am comingfrom a background of computer graphics.Using 3DQuickPress in SolidWorks is verynatural to me. Having achieved the firstmilestone in using 3D tool design, we are nowvery confident to share the skill sets with ourtool design department. “A new user of3DQuickPress will achieve competence withinone or two months in our company. Theefficiency we have gained using 3DquickPressis incomparable. Before having 3DQuickPress,we could hardly finish a tool design in 3D. Inthe last six months, we managed to completemore than ten projects using 3DQuickPress.The final die set.3DQuickPress brings to RT&D not just a 3Ddesign tool, itself is a 5D design process,”shared Robert Konczal, President of STS, thedistributor of 3DQuickPress in North America.“Stamping industries today need 3Dcommunication and design power, plus 2Dmachining and production environment.“The rich contents of 3DQuickPress enable ourcustomers to solve their design problem in agood balance of 3D and 2D.Production-ready-libraries, auto drafting, andautomated assemblies are put together in3DQuickPress to provide our users a highperformance mode. It is not difficult to achievea time reduction of 75% in tool design after ourcustomers have migrated completely into a3DQuickPress production design environment.”Kevin agreed, “By making use ofProduction-Ready-Libraries, we manage tocomplete a die design process within a fewhours. That same process used to take us acouple of weeks using a 2D approach.”7