Software survey: mould design: nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Clive Maier says that if...

SOME of the old mould design skills are being lost. As one who practised them, I am not sorry to see them go. I am thinking of designing what are now standard parts from scratch, trying to figure out whether the mould would fill with only spiral flow tests to go on, the endless calculations involved in complex shapes, the art of visualising a solid moulding from a plan, a couple of sections and an elevation.

I will miss visualising the least. It was hard enough with the moulding. But by the time you had wrapped a cavity and core around it, added plates, screws, ejectors