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PlastChicks Lynzie Nebel and Mercedes Landazuri with guest Mason Myers, Principal Implementation Consultant at Autodesk, discuss the advantages of using simulation software to make it easier to get a process up and running, saving time and money using simulations, Autodesk's Moldflow Simulation software, and automation software advances in meshing and Cloud solving.
PlastChicks – The Voices of Resin, is a plastics podcast hosted by Lynzie Nebel and Mercedes Landazuri, talking about popular plastics topics and the people inspiring the industry! This podcast is supported by the Plastics Industry Association and sponsored by SPE-Inspiring Plastics Professionals. Look for new episodes the first Friday of every month.
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Mercedes Landazuri
If you've got a question, the Voices of Resin are here.
00;00;09;29 - 00;00;12;24
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh, PlastChicks.
00;00;14;18 - 00;00;18;19
Lynzie Nebel
Plastics is an SPE-sponsored podcast. Hi.
00;00;18;19 - 00;00;19;12
Mercedes Landazuri
How's it going?
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Lynzie Nebel
Look at you with your little split shirt.
00;00;21;14 - 00;00;23;05
Mercedes Landazuri
Yeah, it's like. It's like...
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Lynzie Nebel
Oh, all sorts of color blocks.
00;00;26;24 - 00;00;27;09
Mercedes Landazuri
It’s like color stock from the early 90s.
00;00;27;09 - 00;00;33;18
Lynzie Nebel
You’re really living for the color. Well, I mean, we’re kind of coordinated, I’ve got the lipstick and the shirt, kind of matching the top half of your shirt.
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Mercedes Landazuri
Absolutely. We did plan that.
00;00;35;25 - 00;00;42;00
Lynzie Nebel
We did plan that. So everyone who is not on the visual feed, we look identical.
00;00;42;00 - 00;00;44;25
Lynzie Nebel
You can't tell us apart. 100%.
00;00;47;19 - 00;00;59;21
Lynzie Nebel
Okay, So. Well, we’ve got a podcast to record. I think that is the purpose of this adventure here. I'm Lynzie Nebel and I'm an Upstream Product Quote Engineer for Cytiva.
00;00;59;21 - 00;01;17;22
Mercedes Landazuri
I am Mercedes Landazuri, and I am a color expert and met Lynzie through some of the work that we've done for and with SPE and with our powers combined, We are PlastChicks - The Voices of Resin.
00;01;18;22 - 00;01;46;08
Lynzie Nebel
We're so good. So our podcast comes out the first Friday of every month, so you can listen to it anywhere that a podcast shows up. And then if you're feeling extra fancy, you can check us out on YouTube for the visuals, so you can actually see how much Mercedes and I are twins, or you could just watch the awkwardness along with the audio.
00;01;46;08 - 00;01;53;13
Lynzie Nebel
That's exciting. And from social media, all the social medias.
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Mercedes Landazuri
Not TikTok yet.
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Lynzie Nebel
Except for TikTok. But we have the handle. We will probably never make a TikTok, but...
00;02;00;04 - 00;02;01;05
Mercedes Landazuri
We'll talk about it.
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Lynzie Nebel
We will talk about it until TikTok gets taken down by the government. Okay.
00;02;09;26 - 00;02;40;04
Lynzie Nebel
And today we have a guest that I have known for. I don't know, I'm going to say three years because we're both so young and barely out of school. So we have Mason Myers, who is the Principal Implementation Consultant at Autodesk. I have the guest and he paid extra money for the extra words in his title, but we'll see.
00;02;40;06 - 00;02;42;07
Lynzie Nebel
Welcome, Mason!
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Mercedes Landazuri
Hi, Mason!
00;02;42;28 - 00;02;51;17
Mason Myers
Hey, Lynzie. Hey, Mercedes. Thanks for having me and congrats on the podcast in general as well as the Trendy Award. So you guys won an award earlier this year, that is awesome.
00;02;52;12 - 00;02;53;11
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh, thank you.
00;02;53;11 - 00;02;54;20
Lynzie Nebel
We are award winners.
00;02;54;20 - 00;02;56;28
Mercedes Landazuri
As Lynzie likes to say, we're award-winning journalists.
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Lynzie Nebel
It’s on my resume now. Yeah.
00;03;00;06 - 00;03;01;16
Mason Myers
Sounds like a paid title as well.
00;03;02;23 - 00;03;19;21
Mercedes Landazuri
So you guys go way back, I'm pretty sure further back than three years. So tell me before we dive into the real agenda, tell me how you guys know each other, how you met, etc., etc., and maybe what mutual friends we all have in common from those days.
00;03;20;13 - 00;03;55;19
Mason Myers
I'll start since I am the guest. Right. So Lynzie and I went to college together at Penn State, and my first two years I was a class officer for four of them, all four years and everything was going great. My first two years, I was class president and then junior year is really tough about both academically and then also junior year, one of my advisors came up to me and said, You know, you're a pretty good student president, but that freshman class has this really good president. Oh, way better than you. And that is how I met Lynzie.
00;03;55;19 - 00;03;59;01
Lynzie Nebel
We started our very rocky relationship.
00;04;01;14 - 00;04;04;17
Mercedes Landazuri
But that's kind of how Lynzie and I met.
00;04;04;17 - 00;04;12;02
Lynzie Nebel
So basically, I mean, honestly, it's a good trend. I just start off with many enemies and I force you to like me.
00;04;12;19 - 00;04;19;10
Mason Myers
Yeah. I mean, I think Meckley was like, yeah, Lynzie is. She's like selling T-shirts and all kinds of stuff. You haven't done any of that in three years. So.
00;04;20;01 - 00;04;21;19
Mercedes Landazuri
You know, isn't Meckley retired now, did I hear that?
00;04;21;19 - 00;04;25;02
Mason Myers
He is. He might be in Antarctica for all we know right now.
00;04;25;02 - 00;04;31;00
Lynzie Nebel
So I think you just posted a video of him going down a hill in Holiday Valley so...
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Mason Myers
Close.
00;04;31;20 - 00;04;55;08
Lynzie Nebel
He is, he's still in the local area. But I'm sure next week it'll be a video from somewhere else. Yeah. So we did the school thing at the same time. And then actually when I moved back to Erie, it was Mason who said, Hey, I'm a part of the local SPE chapter, you should get involved.
00;04;56;02 - 00;05;08;13
Lynzie Nebel
So I mean, I think it was part of him just shirking his duties, but the other part of it is kind of what got my, you know, my local SPE involvement started.
00;05;08;13 - 00;05;16;02
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh, wow. I had no idea. I just always assumed you started all that because you were trying to beat me with awards.
00;05;16;02 - 00;05;26;18
Lynzie Nebel
You know, my spite, my spite had a different path from the beginning part, and then it was fight for, you know, it’s different trains.
00;05;27;03 - 00;05;34;27
Mercedes Landazuri
So, Mason, tell us about Autodesk. What is it? Yes, that's a good starter question.
00;05;35;15 - 00;06;16;20
Mason Myers
So Autodesk is a really interesting company. We are a solutions provider. We make a lot of different softwares for different industries, so architecture, construction, media and entertainment and then obviously the manufacturing space, which is where I sit. So some of your listeners might know Autodesk from Autodesk Moldflow Simulation software, which I hope we talk more about. I know a little bit about that, but there's other tools that we offer, like Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360 Vault, Nash Tran All these can be used in the manufacturing space of not just plastic products, but other products as well.
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Lynzie Nebel
Well, I think I may have some experience in the flow world. Once or twice, I've fired up that baby. And actually, I was going to ask you a really ridiculous question, but I didn't want to waste time on that. I'll save it for you.
00;06;39;00 - 00;06;40;29
Mercedes Landazuri
It’s what we do.
00;06;40;29 - 00;06;41;04
Mason Myers
Go for it.
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Lynzie Nebel
I was going to. Well, it was specifically on your “don't ask me” list of questions.
00;06;46;16 - 00;06;47;22
Mercedes Landazuri
Okay, So we can save that.
00;06;47;22 - 00;06;54;22
Lynzie Nebel
And I was going to say if you're going to mesh a model of Ben Roethlisberger, what would you use?
00;06;54;22 - 00;07;07;08
Mercedes Landazuri
Wait, so this is specifically, so for all of our listeners, we, before we send out an agenda to all of our guests, we first send them a primer, which is like, is there anything you specifically want to talk about?
00;07;07;14 - 00;07;16;28
Mercedes Landazuri
Anything interesting and exciting that you are working on it you can tell us about. And the third and most important question is anything that is off the table. So Lynzie has...
00;07;16;28 - 00;07;30;12
Lynzie Nebel
And I have just driven straight into, off the table, because Mason is a Steelers fan, which is unfortunate for him. And as we all know, I am a Bills fan and we are...
00;07;31;09 - 00;07;33;00
Mercedes Landazuri
Are you, so are you from Pittsburgh then?
00;07;33;00 - 00;07;51;15
Mason Myers
But I grew up about an hour north of Pittsburgh, so not, didn’t live downtown or nothing like that, but I am from that local area. But to answer your question, Lynzie, if I was going to mesh something of Ben Roethlisberger, it'd probably be one of his Lombardi trophies because we have a lot of them. How many?
00;07;51;25 - 00;07;53;24
Lynzie Nebel
I did walk into that on my own.
00;07;53;24 - 00;07;55;04
Mercedes Landazuri
That should be on your list, Lynzie.
00;07;55;04 - 00;08;03;07
Lynzie Nebel
That should be on my list not to talk about. All right. Well, getting off a topic, I don't want to talk about it anymore. So what is your role at Autodesk?
00;08;03;23 - 00;08;35;09
Mason Myers
So, as you said, my paid title that you think is made up, but I'm Principal Implementation Consultant. That is just the terms that we use in the consultant group. I am on the consultant group in the manufacturing space, so I do focus on Moldflow. As I mentioned before, it's a really great role because consulting, we work with a lot of our larger customers that buy pretty much every piece of software, so our customers have access to every piece of software that we offer.
00;08;35;19 - 00;08;56;29
Mason Myers
So I might be in there working with Moldflow and other colleagues might be working with, you know, CAM tools or Inventor or something like that. But as I mentioned, my main focus is more flow. So I would go in and do training, consulting around the Moldflow product line. And then when I'm not teaching or running Moldflow, I also sit on the certification team for Moldflow
00;08;57;06 - 00;09;06;09
Mason Myers
So I'm helping to make sure the next generation of Moldflow associates, professionals and experts are up to our standards.
00;09;06;25 - 00;09;13;29
Mercedes Landazuri
So to clarify, you work on the actual Moldflow side and not on the Moldflow simulation side, is that right?
00;09;14;17 - 00;09;18;05
Mason Myers
Moldflow simulation, Moldflow. I use those terms interchangeably.
00;09;18;07 - 00;09;26;26
Mercedes Landazuri
Okay. Gotcha. So why do you think that simulation software can be dangerous in the hands of just anyone?
00;09;26;26 - 00;09;52;13
Mason Myers
I don't know if I believe that. I think that simulation is a tool, just like any tool, if it's used properly, you know, good things can happen. If it's used improperly, bad things can happen. But I, I think that anyone can use simulation. I don't think that Moldflow in particular discriminates. I feel that I can teach anyone that's willing to learn.
00;09;52;23 - 00;10;20;08
Mason Myers
It does have its subtle nuances. I would say, but I think that's what I love about Moldflow is that I've had the opportunity to train a lot of different people from different backgrounds. And so, you know, anywhere from an intern to someone that has a Ph.D., anywhere in between and some of my best customers were like business majors, which surprised me because they were going through certification.
00;10;20;08 - 00;10;46;19
Mason Myers
And I was like, Where did you do your engineering undergrad? And they're like, Oh, I'm a business major. And that kind of surprised me, because it is kind of a little bit technical to run the software. But other times I had a tooling apprentice from Switzerland who English was his third language, So anytime I'm training him right, he has to go from English to French, French to German, and I train this guy for a whole week and again, just a tooling apprentice.
00;10;46;19 - 00;11;04;15
Mason Myers
Not that that's wrong, but normally that's not the person you have running simulation. But he was amazing. He was asking questions about workflows that I've never really thought about. So I'm in the opinion that anyone can run, anyone can run Moldflow that's willing to put in the time.
00;11;04;15 - 00;11;46;03
Lynzie Nebel
But I think that's the key right there is the time. I know some of the, just casual conversations with you and one of our other mutual friends who does a lot of training in this arena, sometimes without that kind of training, people can kind of go off of instinct or not instinct. What kind of training do you guys offer that kind of puts people at a level where you would feel comfortable being like, okay, here you go. You can run this, you can run whatever for your company.
00;11;46;11 - 00;12;06;21
Mason Myers
I think it depends on what you want to do with the tool, right? If you're just doing some very basic upfront simulations, where should the gate be? How am I going to design my runner? Those types of things can be taught in just a few days. Now that's a few days of training, but then you have to kind of pick it up and use it yourself.
00;12;06;21 - 00;12;39;25
Mason Myers
Otherwise the training is kind of for naught. But what's interesting about Autodesk is we've taken the same type of technology within Moldflow and we've actually pushed it to our Fusion platform. So someone that's maybe an up front designer, right, they're not going to know. They're not an expert in simulation, but if those people can start making decisions about wall thickness or rib design, gate location, at an upfront level, I think it frees up the analysts to do crazy, crazy in-depth simulation.
00;12;39;26 - 00;12;47;06
Mason Myers
So the Moldflow inside of Fusion we call Injection Molding in Fusion 360. I don't know why we have these crazy terms.
00;12;48;00 - 00;12;48;27
Lynzie Nebel
That is also...
00;12;49;22 - 00;13;08;29
Mason Myers
You know it has a lot of built in what we call tooltips. So if they're trying to do something, we kind of give them, you know, a little push. Say, don't do that. That's not good or keep doing that. That's good. Right. But it's funny because a lot of the Moldflow experts on the team help author those little tooltips.
00;13;08;29 - 00;13;19;03
Mason Myers
So it's kind of like having an analyst right there with you when you're using some of those upfront tools. This was a very long-winded answer to say it varies based on the product that you're trying to learn.
00;13;19;09 - 00;13;27;04
Mercedes Landazuri
So say so you've an industrial designer, for example, designing a part. Would they then get an alert that, hey, this part might be tricky to create a mold for?
00;13;27;24 - 00;13;36;13
Mason Myers
They would they could do things like if you make a wall thickness, that's crazy thick, they might get a warning saying your cooling time is going to be crazy long because of wall thickness.
00;13;36;22 - 00;13;38;16
Lynzie Nebel
This will take 65 hours.
00;13;38;20 - 00;13;53;29
Mason Myers
Exactly right. So we do keep it high level at the part design. Now we are looking at incorporating more in-depth types of, you know, tools like mold design and runners. But we're not quite there yet, at least with that product.
00;13;54;26 - 00;14;27;09
Lynzie Nebel
And I will say, I don't know if you had this problem or this project, Mason, because you’re so much older than me, but I think it was junior year, we had designs come from a school in Ohio. Yeah, it was the industrial design school there. And they sent you just CAD files and they had. And the point was they specifically had no experience with moldability or anything along those lines.
00;14;27;09 - 00;14;47;05
Lynzie Nebel
And you had to take that part and turn it into something moldable and functional in the actual manufacturing world and then feed it back to them, which I feel like it's kind of like the software step is what you guys are hinting at over there.
00;14;47;19 - 00;15;04;20
Mason Myers
That's interesting you mention that, Lynzie, because I often referred that in my training because I think that was the first time that I ran a 3D mesh analysis. And I remember that day like it was yesterday and it was the coolest thing ever. I thought it looked like Play-Doh flowing through a mold, which is kind of what our 3D simulation looks like.
00;15;04;20 - 00;15;15;02
Mason Myers
And yeah, that was a really interesting project. Shout out to Jason Williams on that one because I learned a lot going through that project. I think it's right behind me somewhere we can dig it out. I’ve probably got it.
00;15;15;02 - 00;15;19;03
Lynzie Nebel
Oh, mine's in the basement. I think I can grab mine.
00;15;19;03 - 00;15;20;10
Mercedes Landazuri
I got mine like, right on the bookshelf.
00;15;20;10 - 00;15;37;15
Lynzie Nebel
Mine is on another bookshelf in the other room. And I think about that kind of stuff all the time because I know Mercedes and I while Mercedes has more technical than like that school, Mercedes comes from things from a lot more design perspective, that I don't have in any way.
00;15;37;23 - 00;16;02;25
Lynzie Nebel
And like I always say, if Mercedes and I are talking like she'll sketch something up and I will give her a bulleted list like that is the delineation. And I think that type of project shows where that, you know, where people could differ so much and having those little alerts, it's definitely something I feel like as one of you know, probably someone in the injection molding side would appreciate a designer having that.
00;16;02;25 - 00;16;03;12
Mercedes Landazuri
Absolutely.
00;16;03;19 - 00;16;12;20
Mason Myers
But what's interesting about Moldflow is like, I'm not a very good part designer. I am not a tool designer at all. I'm pretty weak on materials if I'm being honest.
00;16;13;02 - 00;16;14;10
Lynzie Nebel
Tell us what you’re good at.
00;16;14;27 - 00;16;30;05
Mason Myers
Processing really isn't that fun to me either. But I do know aspects of all four of those which if you think about simulation, it kind of sits in the middle. So I'm not an expert of any of those, but I understand design enough to say that's not good. Maybe we should do it this way.
00;16;31;15 - 00;16;42;05
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah. And so kind of going along that you have a fun little thing that you throw up on LinkedIn every Monday called Moldflow Mondays.
00;16;42;05 - 00;16;43;10
Mercedes Landazuri
I love that.
00;16;43;10 - 00;16;52;03
Lynzie Nebel
I love the alliteration. So tell us, why do you do that? What kind of tips do you give? What kind of feedback do you get on that?
00;16;52;13 - 00;17;08;06
Mason Myers
Right. So Moldflow Mondays, as you mentioned, is just something that I was talking with my manager earlier this year and I said, I'm going to do this on LinkedIn and I'm just going to see where it goes. So every Monday I have a little post on just some random tip that has to do with Moldflow normally.
00;17;08;29 - 00;17;38;05
Mason Myers
And it's just this thing that's kind of spun out of control a little bit. I get a lot of great feedback, so there's a couple of us that train people in Moldflow here at Autodesk. Unfortunately, there's only two of us, so we have to train pretty much the entire globe as far as Autodesk customers. So I have a lot of outreach, a lot of customers, and so when I post these things, you know, I get people from Germany and Mexico and India commenting and having discussions on Moldflow.
00;17;38;05 - 00;17;51;21
Mason Myers
It really just makes my Mondays suck less, like it's something I look forward to. And I don't know. I look forward to posting and seeing what what gets response and what gets crickets when I make those posts.
00;17;51;25 - 00;17;55;23
Mercedes Landazuri
That's great. So what, did this initiative come from Autodesk? It or was it your own?
00;17;56;24 - 00;18;42;05
Mason Myers
I don't. I mean, no one from Autodesk really gave me the idea. I just I don't know, I really got tired of seeing like a lack of tech tips around Moldflow And I think there's a lot of misconceptions around the tool and it just kind of drove me a little crazy. So I started making a list of things I wanted to cover and I thought, you know, I'm going to run out of ideas here come January or June or something like that. And it's just the list keeps growing and I keep doing it. But one of the one of our partners in Germany asked me to come speak at a conference, and I said, Sure, what do you want me to talk about? They're like, Why don't you talk about Moldflow Mondays? So he got me a trip over to Europe to talk about that in with some of our customers.
00;18;42;05 - 00;18;43;10
Lynzie Nebel
Well earned there.
00;18;44;23 - 00;18;45;10
Mason Myers
Exactly.
00;18;46;02 - 00;18;59;23
Mercedes Landazuri
So you talk about you talk about misconceptions. You know, that Moldflow can be seen as too time consuming as a first step by some. What would you say is the biggest payoff by doing the Moldflow simulation first?
00;19;00;20 - 00;19;07;28
Mason Myers
I mean to people that say it's time consuming, I would say you could always go back to the hand calcs, right. If you want to do it, that way.
00;19;08;15 - 00;19;08;20
Lynzie Nebel
Perfect.
00;19;09;07 - 00;19;11;06
Mercedes Landazuri
I'm sorry. Go back to the what?
00;19;11;10 - 00;19;35;00
Mason Myers
The hand calculations so you can do the equations by hand. If you really wanted to do. I've done both. The simulation is less time consuming than the hand calcs, you know, as far as the payoff, right. I feel like my professors in college did a pretty good job of teaching me what to do and what not to do.
00;19;35;00 - 00;19;59;24
Mason Myers
But sometimes you just have to make mistakes for yourself. And even, you know, myself. You know, I've made mistakes on putting gates in stupid locations. And I go back to the simulation, and the simulation was trying to tell me that I just didn't pay attention. So as far as the payoff is really just, you know, it's almost like having another engineer sit next to you and try to catch your mistakes.
00;19;59;24 - 00;20;25;00
Mason Myers
So the payoff is really time and money. I've done both. In my last job, I kind of was the process engineer, the part designer, the mold designer and the Moldflow dork. And when I didn't run a Moldflow, startup was a lot more painful. But if I had the simulation ahead of time, it just seemed to go a lot easier as far as getting a process up and running.
00;20;25;00 - 00;20;59;22
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, I know, I know. We all know shops that don't need it because, you know, the thought is too time consuming or too much expense or we've molded something like this, something similar. Not going to be a problem. And I think, you know, every time you see those people stuck, where you go back to, you know, would you be stuck if you had the data to kind of assist you in the beginning or kind of help you out?
00;21;00;17 - 00;21;16;10
Lynzie Nebel
You know, because you can always do your quick, cheater fixes. Okay. Well, let's just open up the gate or we'll do, you know, whatever. But if that's not working now, what? Right. You've already opened up your gate. You've already prayed to the gods and they’re not answering.
00;21;16;10 - 00;21;19;22
Mercedes Landazuri
It reminds me of something that like Mike Southey had he, you know.
00;21;19;23 - 00;21;43;23
Mercedes Landazuri
So when I attended his materials seminar, he had made this reference to, It was either his daughter or his granddaughter’s experience. And the idea here is basically, you know, we hold these things that we think are truths and we go through not even as engineers and scientists, but in life. We go through these tests of our truths.
00;21;43;23 - 00;22;04;24
Mercedes Landazuri
Right? And so this was maybe this daughter knowing, like, okay, I turn on the TV and this specific show is on. Right? And that was her truth. But then she was interrupted and she went back to turn it on. And it was like, what happened to the show, right? So it was like she didn't know the truth of her turning on the TV at a different time for the show not being on.
00;22;05;01 - 00;22;12;13
Mercedes Landazuri
It's the same thing, right? It's like you don't, you're not even taking into account, oh, this other thing was happening that's actually affecting, right?
00;22;12;13 - 00;22;16;00
Lynzie Nebel
It's not 1 to 1. It's my thing.
00;22;16;12 - 00;22;39;01
Mason Myers
And I think that goes two ways. Sorry to interrupt you, Lynzie. If you go back to the skeptics right. I wouldn't discredit great historical knowledge. Right. So we have a pretty diverse industry, a really good group of tooling people in our industry. Those people are not to be discredited by any means. They have a ton of experience.
00;22;39;01 - 00;22;47;16
Mason Myers
But I'm saying that simulation can be used in combination with those historical experiences and try to find a best path forward in the quickest time.
00;22;49;02 - 00;23;08;07
Lynzie Nebel
And, you know, speaking about those people who decide not to do any simulation upfront, if they get to a point in their project where they are stuck or they are struggling, do you see a value in retroactively doing the simulation? Do you have examples of doing that in the past?
00;23;09;18 - 00;23;29;09
Mason Myers
I mean, I think about 50% of my applications are existing molded parts. Now, if they're running fine, they're not going to come to me and ask me to write them a Moldflow on them, right? So it's normally something is gone awry and they're trying to use simulation to fix it. I would say that a lot of times we can, sometimes we can't.
00;23;29;09 - 00;23;52;17
Mason Myers
Right? And I try to be transparent about that. But you know, the upfront simulation, I really think that's a missing piece. I wish we did more of that in our industry. I was just working with a medical customer and I love them to death and one of my favorite customers, but they were doing some insert overmolding and the insert was historically metallic and they were looking to switch it to be a plastic insert.
00;23;53;12 - 00;24;12;03
Mason Myers
And I was running simulation for them and I was like, Did you want to melt the insert during molding? And they're like, No, no, that insert can't melt. And what we found is if they used those two types of plastics that the insert would melt. And they thought that, that would have cost them like 30 to 40 grand to try to fix that.
00;24;12;03 - 00;24;22;23
Mason Myers
So yeah, there could be times where you kind of luck into wins like that, but I think that's what you have to kind of keep your eye out for, is those kind of potential problems.
00;24;24;14 - 00;24;31;03
Lynzie Nebel
Well, that would be bad on a Melcher insert, if you are specifically trying to insert.
00;24;31;03 - 00;24;39;19
Mason Myers
Sometimes you might want to have like a thin layer of reamer. In this case, it was it was pretty severe that yeah, was not going to end well.
00;24;39;25 - 00;25;12;06
Lynzie Nebel
I love that. So speaking of like simulating inserts and stuff like that, like, I mean, maybe that existed back in the day when I was first booting up the old DOS computer to run simulation. But is that like a newer advancement? It is that kind of stuff part of what is really being developed by Autodesk?
00;25;12;06 - 00;25;14;26
Mason Myers
So instead of answer your question, I'm going to ask you both a question.
00;25;14;27 - 00;25;15;25
Lynzie Nebel
That sounds about right.
00;25;15;25 - 00;25;21;20
Mason Myers
So what year do you think Moldflow was founded? Take a guess.
00;25;21;20 - 00;25;28;16
Lynzie Nebel
Wasn't it? Like, I feel like I maybe know.
00;25;28;16 - 00;25;29;29
Mercedes Landazuri
1982.
00;25;29;29 - 00;25;33;02
Lynzie Nebel
Wasn't that like 73.
00;25;33;11 - 00;25;35;02
Mason Myers
It was 1978.
00;25;35;02 - 00;25;37;19
Lynzie Nebel
I was going to say 78.
00;25;37;19 - 00;26;02;05
Mason Myers
But for a software company, that's insane. So obviously Autodesk acquired Moldflow I think 15 years ago or so, but Moldflow itself was a software company. It's been around since the late seventies, which is nuts. So yeah, Lynzie, there's a ton of stuff that's been around for a long time. Insert overmolding., I think, we could do that when we were learning the tool three years ago as memory...
00;26;02;26 - 00;26;06;02
Lynzie Nebel
Moldflow could do that, not me.
00;26;06;02 - 00;26;21;26
Mason Myers
Well, I mean, that's something that we typically reserve for the advanced course in there. In our fundamentals course, we typically cover the basics, and insert overmolding, while important, is something we reserve for the advanced users, which is probably why we didn't learn about it in college.
00;26;22;11 - 00;26;24;10
Lynzie Nebel
We are not in the advanced category.
00;26;24;27 - 00;26;39;10
Mason Myers
Yeah, it's actually pretty easy to do that, that the way Moldflow handles your CAD coming in is just like meshing multiple bodies, which is pretty easy. So if you had like multiple Vince Lombardi trophies that you're trying to mesh...
00;26;39;28 - 00;26;41;10
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, this is all on me.
00;26;41;12 - 00;26;42;14
Mason Myers
Just as easy as doing one.
00;26;42;14 - 00;26;43;21
Lynzie Nebel
This is all my fault.
00;26;43;21 - 00;26;50;09
Mercedes Landazuri
So what are some of the newer advancements that modern Moldflow can account for?
00;26;50;09 - 00;26;50;22
Mason Myers
Sure.
00;26;50;22 - 00;26;54;00
Lynzie Nebel
That are not insert molding from the early 2000s..
00;26;55;11 - 00;27;15;11
Mason Myers
So back when I was learning the tool, I think the two things that I've been impressed with is cloud solving and meshing improvements. So cloud solving has been really a game changer for us because back in the day when I started, before Lynzie started using Moldflow.
00;27;16;00 - 00;27;17;01
Lynzie Nebel
How many years before.
00;27;17;16 - 00;27;33;06
Mason Myers
Were so old and slow in like an analysis could take hours or, you know, several hours, if not a full day. Cloud solving is really helping with that because now you can launch the data to the cloud and you're not tying up your laptop. So I can watch...
00;27;33;07 - 00;27;40;13
Lynzie Nebel
I do remember like having , when a group of us were doing it, we would like launch your.,,
00;27;40;22 - 00;27;41;25
Mason Myers
Machine. Yeah.
00;27;41;27 - 00;27;54;17
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, you would. You would launch it and then it'd be like, All right, three of us are going to go down and get some food at Bruno's. What do you want? You watch our computers and nobody comes in the lab and takes them. But like, these are going to be running for a while, right?
00;27;54;17 - 00;28;02;29
Mercedes Landazuri
That's amazing. So was it like also within like, was this also the time of, like, dial up Internet where you're, like, waiting to load.
00;28;04;14 - 00;28;26;21
Mason Myers
Just after, it's actually, we weren't too far away from dial up like maybe five or six years. But yeah. Lynzie, It's basically like you're doing that now, except there's a bank of, you know, 100 computers that are crunching the job. And then the second one is meshing, right? Meshing used to take a whole day, right? 6 to 8 hours to mesh a part, which was insane.
00;28;27;02 - 00;28;39;22
Mason Myers
Now that's down to like minutes. If I have to clean up the mesh. Right. I've, I'm contemplating my life choices. Some, something has gone wrong in my project that I have to like spend time to clean up a mesh.
00;28;39;22 - 00;28;51;16
Lynzie Nebel
And same with like that. I remember starting meshes, and it was like, you have to get it started before you leave the lab tonight, fr you will not have it for class the next day. You're like, Oh shit.
00;28;51;16 - 00;28;58;23
Mercedes Landazuri
So, for those of us who may not be molding experts, what is, what is mesh, What is meshing, What are you talking about?
00;28;58;23 - 00;29;26;07
Mason Myers
So say we want to simulate a part, right? My mouse right here. Right. We can't just say figure out the pressure to mold that part. We have to break it up into tiny chunks that we call mesh. And these little chunks, we can calculate things like temperature, pressure, shear rate along the mass. So it's a way of taking a very complex part and breaking it into smaller subsections, do a bunch of calculations, and then we get our final answer there.
00;29;27;10 - 00;29;28;09
Mercedes Landazuri
But not hand calcs.
00;29;28;25 - 00;29;32;12
Mason Myers
You could, but that's what we're doing. That's what the computer's doing.
00;29;33;03 - 00;29;42;08
Lynzie Nebel
You're a conspiracy theorist and don't want the computers to take over the world. Right. You can do the hand calcs. I would rather die.
00;29;42;18 - 00;30;04;18
Mason Myers
I actually did that in my last job. My boss refused to pay for a Moldflow simulation before we got access to the tool, and he wanted me to design a mold with, like, four different materials. And I was like, I can't sign off on this design. So I did some hand calcs. It took like a whole day and I threw this stack of papers at him and I said, This would have taken minutes in simulation, but you made me waste the whole day.
00;30;04;18 - 00;30;05;16
Mason Myers
But we got it soon after.
00;30;06;07 - 00;30;11;15
Lynzie Nebel
I like that it was very sassy and it still got you the software and not fired.
00;30;11;15 - 00;30;14;01
Mercedes Landazuri
And this is not your old boss, John Beaumont, you’re talking about.
00;30;14;02 - 00;30;20;19
Mason Myers
No, no, it was the boss in between. I've had so many bosses. How many bosses have you had in your industry, in your careers?
00;30;21;15 - 00;30;21;28
Lynzie Nebel
So many.
00;30;21;28 - 00;30;22;27
Mercedes Landazuri
A lot.
00;30;22;27 - 00;30;27;08
Lynzie Nebel
Four at least. Yeah. More than this many. Yeah.
00;30;27;08 - 00;30;28;01
Mercedes Landazuri
Lynzie’s holding up five fingers, for those listening.
00;30;28;01 - 00;30;34;28
Lynzie Nebel
For those not watching the video. Yes. More than five.
00;30;35;04 - 00;30;39;01
Mercedes Landazuri
Same. So yeah, I've probably had about ten.
00;30;39;15 - 00;30;45;04
Mason Myers
That's crazy. I mean I'm up to double digits, too.
00;30;46;28 - 00;31;09;16
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah. And I think that's one of those things where, you know, it seems like a luxury like to have multiple like if you're talking to someone who's like just starting, just trying to start building molds and get them running, you know, sometimes that can seem like we don't need this extra stuff that's the same as like the automated dryer.
00;31;09;16 - 00;31;33;16
Lynzie Nebel
Like, we don't need that. We can just scoop it out and it'll be fine. Nothing will go wrong. And I think that's one of those things that gets missed, you know, as we're talking about earlier, as something that you could be spending an entire day doing work or you could be skipping over that and then having to go back and still spend that money or still spend that day trying to pick up what you lost.
00;31;34;00 - 00;31;34;09
Mason Myers
Right.
00;31;34;09 - 00;31;36;02
Lynzie Nebel
You know, and rushing
00;31;36;11 - 00;31;48;06
Mason Myers
And even if when you have the tool, I like it when Moldflow disagrees with me and it's kind of weird. I kind of have this inner monologue between myself and my Moldflow results. But I think that's the point.
00;31;48;08 - 00;31;49;22
Lynzie Nebel
It’s a very interesting conversation.
00;31;49;22 - 00;32;10;00
Mason Myers
But no, like you, you've run something and you expect it to feel like you kind of have an expectation, right? It's going to fill in X PSI or whatever. And when it does agrees with you, that's when you pause and dig in to figure out why is that different. So for me, I actually like it. I like it when Moldflow agrees with me, that means I'm doing my job.
00;32;10;00 - 00;32;19;22
Mason Myers
But when it disagrees with me, I think that's really interesting because that's time to pause and catch something that you might not have caught as, especially if you weren't running the simulation.
00;32;20;02 - 00;32;23;00
Mercedes Landazuri
So absolutely, it goes back to turning on the TV at a different time.
00;32;23;00 - 00;32;24;26
Mason Myers
Exactly. Exactly.
00;32;24;26 - 00;32;28;11
Mercedes Landazuri
Through revamping your thesis right?
00;32;28;11 - 00;32;29;03
Mason Myers
Exactly.
00;32;29;03 - 00;32;50;06
Lynzie Nebel
But when it does disagree with you, you know, obviously you've been around for a while, but say someone who is newer to Moldflow or just day one on the job trying to get something done, What can they do to kind of check themselves besides hand calcs?
00;32;51;02 - 00;32;51;06
Mercedes Landazuri
I was just going to say hand calcs again.
00;32;51;06 - 00;32;56;10
Lynzie Nebel
So, yeah. So it's a math-based program. Everybody can use a notebook and a good calculator.
00;32;56;15 - 00;33;18;06
Mason Myers
So I was actually teaching a course in Chicago and I was kind of checking the box. Customer gave me a part. It was about the size of a license plate, but it was a gasket or a seal and they said that we use six gates. So I put the gates three on one side, three and another symmetrically spaced, and I'm smarter than Moldflow.
00;33;18;06 - 00;33;33;28
Mason Myers
I ran it and and I was about to teach the course. I was like, Oh, crap, I should show them the gate location tool where Moldflow helps you pick where to gate the part. And so I ran it. I knew what Moldflow was going to say because I'm smarter than Moldflow. And it gave me something that I didn't expect.
00;33;34;02 - 00;33;57;20
Mason Myers
The gates were basically asymmetric and I was like, Why? So, Lynzie, if I ever have that curiosity, I, I run it right, run it, run what Moldflow thinks I should do and then run what I think I should do and we'll see who's right. And that was one case where I was not right. And I love that because I was just so confident, so smart that I was going to be so much smarter than Moldflow.
00;33;57;20 - 00;34;21;20
Mason Myers
And it was like, No, no, you're not. So I guess that's the point is like, it's a sanity check. Sometimes the analyst is smarter than Moldflow, but other times they're not. So when you have that question, just run it and then back it up with data. So when I used to run Moldflow in college, like just learning the tool, I used to run like one or two studies and like my homework was done right.
00;34;22;03 - 00;34;38;12
Mason Myers
The longer that I run Moldflow for a profession, all of a sudden now my studies look like they're ten or 12 individual studies because I'm trying different materials or different gate locations. And if you launched them all, you know, we can give get a lot of answers in a short amount of time, especially with cloud solving.
00;34;39;22 - 00;34;50;22
Lynzie Nebel
I was going to say. And now back in the day when you're trying to do it for homework, you only had 18 hours, right? One or two studies might be all you have time for.
00;34;50;22 - 00;34;52;13
Mason Myers
Right.
00;34;52;13 - 00;35;00;12
Lynzie Nebel
And you know, you were kind of talking about like there's the gate location finder. You know, you're saying you're running a bunch of different materials.
00;35;01;11 - 00;35;21;04
Lynzie Nebel
Is there like a variable or parameter that you see from customers that they don't think it is as big of a deal as it really ends up being? Like, do people say, oh, I can just run whatever material that's going to be fine, or Oh, I can fix the gate location, that's going to be fine or whatever else?
00;35;21;12 - 00;35;40;29
Mason Myers
Yeah. So I think, yes, I see it. It's kind of one of my sticking points is we go through training and I show them all these cool tools. And my biggest beef is when I come back to them and they're using like the default settings. Meanwhile, they should have been like, is that the melt temperature you're using? And they're like, Oh, I don't know, it's just the default.
00;35;40;29 - 00;36;03;11
Mason Myers
So that drives me nuts because maybe you've maybe what? Maybe you should use the default or maybe you shouldn't. Like, you just put it in there, right? Figure it out. So that I would probably say the process in general, just think about, you know, any injection molding process. If you just put in random numbers at the set point, you're going to get a part.
00;36;03;11 - 00;36;25;19
Mason Myers
It might be short, they might be flashed. Maybe it's a good one. I don't know. But if you adjust the temperatures, the filling speeds, the switchover, pack and hold times, Right. Things change. That's why we have all those knobs on our injection molding machine. So I would say people using the defaults drives me insane when they know that they maybe shouldn't using those defaults.
00;36;25;19 - 00;36;39;09
Lynzie Nebel
And so you have, like I said, someone who's somewhat new on an Moldflow and they're using the default settings and maybe someone like you steps in and tells them like, let's not.
00;36;40;15 - 00;36;41;10
Mason Myers
Very politely.
00;36;41;19 - 00;36;48;13
Lynzie Nebel
Very I'm sure, the email signed with a Principal Implementation Consultant at Autodesk...
00;36;48;13 - 00;36;51;15
Mercedes Landazuri
It's not like a per my last email.
00;36;51;15 - 00;37;06;02
Lynzie Nebel
Those are my emails. How do you, what do you suggest? Do you suggest they do more simulation to figure out where their settings should be? Or do you suggest they take it to the floor and figure out there or is it a combination?
00;37;06;02 - 00;37;24;00
Mason Myers
Exactly. It could be a combination like, is the tool. It's almost like you have two different ways to use simulation. Is the tool in production because if it is, you don't need to do a lot of upfront homework to figure out gate location, render size, right? That's known, right? The tool is built. What is the runner size? What is the fill time?
00;37;24;12 - 00;37;49;02
Mason Myers
Go look it up. If it's a new application, then they get a pass, a partial pass for me because there's a lot of ways...there's a lot of different avenues you can take to help figure that out. There's even some old school code that's still available called like molding window. It's one of my favorite analyses to run because it's fast.
00;37;49;02 - 00;38;01;09
Mason Myers
You get an answer in seconds, but that can help you establish your mold melt and injection time using old school strip files that you could do by hand calcs or Excel if that.
00;38;01;09 - 00;38;02;02
Lynzie Nebel
In the same time.
00;38;02;08 - 00;38;16;19
Mason Myers
That's basically what it is. It's simplifying the part into a flow length, assuming some thickness variation, but it gets you an answer very fast. I would rather you do that as a starting point than just like whatever the default is for the material.
00;38;18;16 - 00;38;29;24
Mercedes Landazuri
And are you able to take different resins into account, Like if you know now with everybody increasing levels of PCR or, you know, in my world, you know where you have 4% Masterbatch, that's different melt flow.
00;38;29;24 - 00;38;51;24
Mason Myers
Yeah. So we do have a pretty large material database. We have over 12,000 materials, which sounds cool if you're a simulation analyst, but if you're a material supplier, right, may seem on the low end, but we do have a pretty wide database and we also have some testing facilities here in North America, Beaumont being one of them.
00;38;51;24 - 00;39;08;20
Mason Myers
You can pay to get your material characterized. If you are in another location, you can send it to our labs in Australia. Same equipment, both locations. They can do a full characterization. That way your material is characterized and you're going to get the best results with your material.
00;39;09;09 - 00;39;28;03
Mercedes Landazuri
But can you see, can you, I guess because you would have to make a compound of the two different materials, right? You don't know what it is. I mean, is that something that that you guys are working on that you can talk about or is that not on the on the agenda yet for Autodesk?
00;39;28;23 - 00;39;39;00
Mason Myers
I mean, you can go in and change things, but you're kind of like ripping the tag off the mattress at that point, like you're voiding the warranty a little bit. I don't recommend that you go in there.
00;39;39;00 - 00;39;41;18
Lynzie Nebel
You can rip the tag off on your mattress?
00;39;41;18 - 00;40;05;21
Mason Myers
But I don't recommend but you can you know, we've talked to you know, I've had conversations with other Moldflow analysts about doing something similar to that. I would like to maybe see a research project on that, but it's still in flux. But maybe I can talk to some people that do material testing and see what if that would be a viable research project.
00;40;06;20 - 00;40;11;00
Lynzie Nebel
Look at that, Mercedes, we’re already making waves.
00;40;11;00 - 00;40;28;27
Mercedes Landazuri
I think it's something that simulators have already been thinking about for a while, but nobody knows how to tackle. Right. But I just see it will start coming up more as people start to use different levels of PCR, you know, more so than the Masterbatch side, which is much lower.
00;40;28;27 - 00;40;48;27
Mason Myers
But it's you know, it's kind of interesting, as you point out, you'd almost have to have different characterizations for different batches. Another thing that would be interesting is if we could put ranges on that, but boy, we're testing for a certain batch, hopefully we have minimal amount of variation. But yeah, we could, it’s still a possibility.
00;40;50;24 - 00;40;57;06
Lynzie Nebel
Yeah, you’ve just got to hope your end product has tolerances like for the crew.
00;40;57;17 - 00;41;14;16
Mason Myers
It could be worse than Mercedes. So my last job was thermosets. So like if you think you have. Yeah, right. So we used to scrape the stuff off of trees in Southeast Asia. So like, if you've ever had a bad day dealing with the material supplier, it could be, could be worse. It could be dealing with gum trees.
00;41;15;14 - 00;41;41;03
Lynzie Nebel
How exciting? That's when Mason was a scientist, a senior scientist, fancy title. But then I don't know where we're getting all this fancy titles from. All right, Well, I think we're just about out of time here. Always a pleasure talking to you, Mason.
00;41;41;03 - 00;41;41;23
Mason Myers
This has been fun.
00;41;41;23 - 00;41;44;06
Mercedes Landazuri
Mason Meyers, Thank you so much for joining us on PlastChicks.
00;41;44;06 - 00;41;46;03
Mason Myers
And thank you for having me. This was a great time.
00;41;46;14 - 00;41;50;01
Lynzie Nebel
And Mercedes will buy you a beer at our next outing.
00;41;50;01 - 00;41;50;26
Mercedes Landazuri
I will.
00;41;50;26 - 00;41;51;02
Mason Myers
Sounds good.
00;41;52;04 - 00;41;53;05
Mercedes Landazuri
I will?
00;41;53;05 - 00;41;53;10
Lynzie Nebel
I will?
00;41;54;00 - 00;41;56;00
Mercedes Landazuri
I will.
00;41;56;00 - 00;41;57;03
Lynzie Nebel
All right. Thank you.
00;41;57;16 - 00;41;58;24
Mason Myers
Thanks.
00;41;58;24 - 00;42;27;09
Lynzie Nebel
Hey, thanks so much for listening. The PlastChicks new episodes appear on the first Friday of every month, so either follow or subscribe to get those new episodes ASAP. PlastChicks - The Voices of Resin is a plastics podcast sponsored by SPE-Inspiring Plastics Professionals. If you want to find out more about SPE, please visit “4” like the number, SPE dot org.
00;42;27;09 - 00;42;30;04
Mercedes Landazuri
Oh. PlastChicks.