ANAHEIM, CA (PTC Live Global 2013), June 12, 2013 - An engineer fresh out of
school is overflowing with knowledge, yet knows nothing --about manufacturing. Reminders are happily supplied by machinists.
I'll call my machinist Bill. I'd use his real name but he might still be alive. When I unfurled my drawing (this was more than 20 years ago) and showed him a perfect part, he lost no time in pointing to a curved surface on which I had specified a hole. "How the hell am I going to get a drill on that?" As I rolled the drawing back up and slunk back to the drafting table, I could almost hear Bill and his buddies having a good laugh.
It was my first experience with designing for manufacturing. It manifested itself in the form of a grizzled curmudgeon of a shop foreman back in my day. Geometric may have found a way to put Bill in a box. Called DFMPro, I suspect it is not quite a humbling experience.
DFM Pro will detect the lack of a flat spot on which a drill would enter and exit.
On hand at PTC annual user meeting to demo DFMPro was Sameer Konejkar, head of products and technologies. Sameer shows me how it can find lack of socket clearance around screw heads, lack of access that would prevent servicing of a part (great news for anyone who's tried to remove an oil filter from a car), and holes not aligned in mating parts (preventing insertion of fasteners). Customers have said DFMPro has helped them find thin mold walls, undercuts, incorrect bend radii. I'm sure it can do a whole lot more.
DFMPro claims to be able to solve 20% of the rework parts go through and that a manual DFM process can be error prone. It integrates with Creo Parametric, SolidWorks and NX. You can buy it for as little as $3K for an individual locked version of $9.5K for unlocked version that can be shared.
DFMPro may not know as much as an experienced machinist but but at least you would be spared the humiliation.
Watch how DFMPro helped JABIL to prevent downstream issues right at the design stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-c3BoA2S_8
Posted by: Shaun | July 09, 2013 at 11:31 PM