Moulding software products to be shown at the UK's PDM 2005 event include plastics melt quality simulation and run flow simulation for mould tool design.

At the PDM 2005 event, Moldex3D will be showing new products, in addition to the established range of simulation software, through their local distributor FlowHow UK . * ScrewPlus melt quality simulation - in the injection moulding process, one of the most important process conditions is the actual temperature and/or the temperature distribution of the polymer melt. However, the true polymer melt temperature is very difficult to determine and so an estimate is normally used for the mold filling and packing simulations.

To better predict the true melt condition, Moldex3D have added the ScrewPlus module to Moldex3D Ver 7.0 to simulate the behaviour of material within the machine barrel.

This is based on the FLOW 2000 Extruder simulation technology, developed by Compuplast International The ScrewPlus Simulator shows the effect of the melt inhomogeneity (unmelted fraction) and temperature variations both along the barrel and across the depths of the screw flights.

The screw and barrel parameters can then be optimised to ensure that the melt is fully homogenous that a true melt temperature is established for use in the full Feed and Cavity flow analysis.

Experiments have shown that improved melt quality can significantly improve Part quality and minimise Pressure to Fill and Clamp Force * Modex3D Express - Moldex3D-Express has been developed as a low-cost, easy to use and quick to run flow simulation tool for part and mold designers.

Geometry is imported into Moldex3D-Express in STL format and automatically converted to solid Voxel mesh (i e Cuboid elements).

The simulation is run in true 3D using the same HP-FVM solver technology as used in Moldex3D/Solid - Flow, so the accuracy of Solid flow simulation is maintained, with results being available anywhere within the thickness of the part.

Available filling results include: * Fill pattern.

* Pressure.

* Temperature.

* Shear stress.

* Shear rate.

* X-Y-Z velocity.

* Estimated cooling time.

Initial trials on a Pentium III PC with 1Gb of RAM show that, on a test part with 25,000 Voxel elements, a Filling simulation can be run in 6 minutes with the automatic mesh generation taking some 2.5 minutes .