PARAMETRIC DESIGN OF ROTATIONALLY MOULDED TANKS & THEIR ASSOCIATED TOOLING

This work examines the use of parametric methods for the development of a range of plastic tanks. The tank geometries are used as the basis for the development of the moulds required for their manufacture thereby extending parametric design from the product development domain to the manufacturing arena. CAD models are developed for typical product geometries based on a family of vertical fluid storage tank designs from 500 litre up to 10,000 litre capacities. The tank designs are then used as the basis for the development of the tool / mould arrangement for each product. The parametric methods developed here are equally applicable to other rotationally moulded products where design rules can be established and executed for multiple product versions. The same approach can be applied to any CAD package supporting the use of a Macro editor capability. The results of this investigation show that the parametric approach is well suited for use to model product families with their associated tooling but its utility diminishes for bespoke / one off product designs or products with significant feature based differences between versions.