what kind of things would you want to make that require more organic/freeform modelling @pd ?

im pulling up some data rn i can show you

i dont really know anything about cad modelling btw, just interested

ah

looks like car panels and such?

indeed

this is a headliner

cool

i used to think they did this with surfaces

but that's impossible

my job is usually to take this and turn it into a tool

like this

ahh

which is harder than it looks

so these things get stamped out of a section of plate then?

or into

Lol i made a replica juul in solidworks

it's soft trim so the actual part is made of basically plastic, fiberglass, and a covering material like vinyl or cloth

you take sheet material and compress it into a shape

then trim

how is it compressed into that shape?

with a press

you make two sides of a mold and put the sheet material in between

then squish them together

the sheet material being the plastic/fiberglass/vinyl or cloth combination you mentioned?

correct

finished parts look like this

interesting, i wouldve thought for fiberglass you would lay it inside the mold, fill it with resin, vacuum suck it and then let it sit till its dry

that's thermoset molding

aha

which is popular as well

but thermoform is faster

vrom vrom

in many cases it takes hours or even a day or more to cure themoset parts

which is why one of our customers had to basically shut down for two years and rethink their tooling

i can imagine that takes a long time

how does it work for thermoform molding?