The SOLIDWORKS Plastics comes with a material database which has access to thousands of materials for use with respect to part cavity, mold bodies and coolant.
In this blog, we will be going through how to use the Polymer Material database and create/import new material based on requirement.
In the Plastics study, to apply/edit the polymer, we can access the database by either right clicking the unit under Injection units or Browse Material in SOLIDWORKS Plastics Command Manager Tab. So, we can use from the database or access the recently used ones.
The material database provides you the capability to access the polymers by family, company or by a dedicated search option in the default database, where you can easily add the polymer to cavity. If the polymer you require to add in your cavity is not in the default database, you can try to fetch it in two ways – use similar or create new. We can explore the polymer material parameters and specific properties such as viscosity, thermal conductivity, PVT, Specific heat, shear relaxation modulus and curing model for each material available in database.
First, to identify the material which is similar to required material using the search polymer search in Material Database. You can classify the search using the options such as material group, melt temperature, mold temperature and so on. This will easily simplify our search for similar material and helps to proceed further.
If the material property/parameters which is required does not match with any material in the available database, we can access the user defined database. We can create and edit the material group and add material. Also, you can copy material from default database and paste it here.
There are options to import materials from input file (format such as bin, xml, xls or xlsx) or materiality webpage.
Exporting a specific material or entire database can be done using the export material option for maintaining backup or sharing with other users.
Until here, we have explored how we can access the material library and customize the database based as per our requirement. We will be back with yet another blog in this SOLIDWORKS Plastics blog series covering the advanced options in SOLIDWORKS Plastics.
If you wish to know more in SOLIDWORKS Plastics, you can contact us now through [email protected]
About Author:
Ramesh Aravind is a Customer Success Associate based out of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He has completed Master’s in Engineering with specialization in Industrial Metallurgy. He had joined Conceptia Konnect team in August, 2022 and has a good experience in SOLIDWORKS & 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions.
