Study on the correlated design method of plate holes for progressive dies based on functional feature

There are a lot of holes in a progressive die for mounting inserts, assembles, and standards. This paper gives the classification of plate holes of progressive die design according to their structural types and relationships between the correlating parts and the plate holes and describes an automated hole design system for progressive dies. Taking advantage of prebuilt design knowledge and standard parts database, this system is able to generate the correlated holes on the main plates of progressive dies, such as upper die shoes, lower die shoes, stripper plates, punch plates, die plates, punch backing plates, and die backing plates according to the inserted parts or functional assembles. A descriptive model is set up. The feature library technology is adopted to develop the function for the design of plate holes, which can improve the efficiency and shorten the design cycle. The hole design system is built on the top of SolidWorks, taking advantage of its built-in modules, including part, assembly, and drawing. We use progressive die for motor core as concrete examples to demonstrate the power of our system. Experimental results show that our system cannot only improve the design quality but also reduce the design time and cost.