Horizon 2020 Program
“Puzzle Die” – Long life to the tool
Modern way to build a tool, using a new technique to implement “classic” ideas in an innovative way.
Horizon2020 is the biggest funding program for research and development currently in force in UE.
Costamp applied for this program on October 2016 and the presented project was appointed, in January 2017 call, as one of the three Italian worthwhile ones.
At this moment, the project can definitely be considered more development than research, in fact the project is in a higher TRL (technology readiness level) stage, and it has already proved to be working.
Scope of the project
Costamp, thanks to FEM/CFD simulation suppliers, had been able to implement a new design and construction technique that allowed to build tools in a way to make them last longer than ever before.
To apply this new approach, complex FEM simulations were needed, but the time required to have results from these simulations did not usually match with the time to market asked by the customers.
The need to get FEM results in a shorter time, gave Costamp the idea to start the development of a brand new software, based on an “easy-to-use” configuration and with the hope to be possibly having a disruptive impact on the HPDC market.
This is not totally new for Costamp, in fact thanks to the subsidiary PIQ2, in 2016 a new filling simulation software (CASTLE), able to compete with the biggest players, was launched on the market. Intuitive interface and calculation on open-source kernel were the fundamental principles, to provide simulation capabilities also to foundry men.
For this new project, a wide net of collaborations has been set up: Università di Brescia, Politecnico di Milano (both Lecco and Milano departments), software developers, FEM experts, and specialists in Die Casting measurements.
All of them have been brought together to give Costamp the possibility to come up with something new, fast, effective and user-friendly.
Experiment campaigns have been run and big efforts made to create a new algorithm to calculate the thermo-mechanical fatigue factor, which is the key number to determine the weakest areas of the die.
An official request to get both puzzle die technique and the related logo patented has been sent to the proper competent authorities. They are now in a “pending” status.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 766907.
For information do not hesitate to contact: info@costampgroup.it
