The 3D Design Solution for Building Machines That Process AHSS Steels
Braho Machinery is an engineering firm specializing in mechanical services for steel producers and processors. By combining the disciplines of mechanical engineering and metallurgy, they meet the need for expert knowledge about processes, machinery, controls, and how they work together.
Criteria for a 3D Design Solution
Part of running a business is a continuous dedication to improving your service to further your competitive advantage, thereby helping to guarantee a stream of revenue to your organization.
When it comes to mechanical design services, one of the best things you can do is to move your design work to 3D. 3D provides numerous benefits such as visualization, interference checking, and more accurate designs. Braho Machinery realized it needed to make this change and began the search for the right 3D design solution.
To begin the migration to 3D, Braho Machinery first listed the most important aspects of a design tool and used that list to identify a 3D design solution to use. The solution had to:
- Have the ability to explore multiple designs and make changes quickly
- Not be restricted by the limitations of traditional history-based design
- Be expandable with third-party tools as Braho’s needs evolved
Finding a solution that met these requirements would improve Braho’s competitiveness in the steel industry.
Of the three requirements, the ability to design in 3D without the limitations of a traditional history-based 3D design tool and make changes quickly were the most important. Why? Because with traditional solid 3D CAD software history and feature trees, you can easily break a design if you are not aware of the relationships between its various features.
Braho’s 3D Design Solution of Choice
Since IronCAD has built-in intelligence that automatically re-orders history and treats every feature as an intelligent object that knows how to interact with one another, breaking a history/feature tree is a non-issue. This greatly reduces design time as users don’t have to spend time worrying about relationships or breaking features. With IronCAD, you simply design the part as you need, without worrying about unanticipated design changes. The software intelligently recalculates and reorders everything for you.
Since IronCAD also offers various add-ons to its 3D design solution, Braho knew that as their needs changed (e.g., needing FEA), they would be covered. Indeed, one of IronCAD’s latest add-ons, Multiphysics for IronCAD, proved not only to give Braho the FEA tool they needed, but also provided an analysis tool that was markedly faster than other FEA systems available in the market, improving Braho’s design and the company’s value to its customers.
For example, the image above is one of Braho’s more recent designs done in IronCAD. The image is a combination of two of Braho’s development projects. It shows a tension reel with a belt wrapper for AHSS steels (the future of automotive products). Due to IronCAD’s advanced modeling technology, it was easy to take the two designs and merge them together into a new design without worrying about breaking any dependencies.
“Much of our business comes from helping the steel industry prepare for next-generation advanced high strength steels required by the automotive industry,” said Brian Braho, owner of Braho Machinery. “The new steel products place heavy demands on the equipment. Strong, reliable, technically advanced equipment is needed. We have a research and development program to prepare the machine designs necessary. IronCAD is an essential part of that process.
“We first began our search for a 3D design solution more than 10 years ago. We are very happy with our decision to use IronCAD. It has become an essential part of our design process. The recent addition of Multiphysics for IronCAD has really helped us take our designs to the next level.”
IronCAD Benefits for Braho Machinery
- Design insight – designs are clear to Braho and its customers for better quality and improved communication
- Speed – IronCAD’s design methodology lets Braho design faster than the competition
- Multiphysics for IronCAD – in-CAD FEA provides analysis and design refinements much faster than traditional FEA packages
