C-MOLD, an Ivy League Technology Spin-Off Leads Plastics Computer-Aided-Engineering Revolution.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 1997--The prevalence of plastic and plastics products in the world may come as a surprise to some people. We use plastic countless times in our everyday lives. Whether it is your remote control, your coffee maker, your cellular phone, your car dashboard, your ski boots, or your television - all have parts that are made from plastic.

Plastic has become a material of choice for many design engineers because it helps conserve resources - it is light weight, durable, formable, and it enables manufacturers to minimize the raw materials used, energy consumed and waste generated in the production of goods. Prior to C-MOLD, the leader in the emerging marketplace of Plastics CAE, companies had to go through an extensive trial and error process to determine whether or not a new product design was manufacturable and economically viable.

According to The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc., the United States plastics industry alone is statistically significant in terms of its contributions to the economy. It directly employs more than 1.2 million workers. The industry generates more than $225 billion in annual shipments and has a $4 billion annual trade surplus. In 1996 alone there were over 76.5 billion pounds of plastic produced.

Now C-MOLD has made life a lot easier for global companies such as Sony, Polaroid, Intel, Ford, Whirlpool, Saturn, Samsung, Samsonite, and many more in the plastics manufacturing arena. C-MOLD has taken critical Ivy League technology research and evolved sophisticated Computer-Aided-Engineering tools for today's designers and manufacturers. CAE makes it possible to replace traditional, sequential decision-making procedures with a concurrent design process, in which all parties can interact and share information.

C-MOLD started in 1986 as a commercial technology venture transferring research from Cornell University's Cornell Injection Molding Program (CIMP) to the global marketplace. The CIMP Consortium began this innovative project in 1974. With C-MOLD, the hundreds of thousands of products produced annually using the injection molding process could be optimized during both the design and manufacturing stages. Injection molding was revolutionized.

The leaders and co-founders of this unparalleled effort were Professor K.K. Wang and Dr. V.W. Wang. Professor Wang, C-MOLD's Chairman and Dr. Wang, C-MOLD's President and Chief Executive Officer, currently work as a part of CIMP and C-MOLD, respectively in Ithaca, New York. Key to the success of the C-MOLD mission is Mr. Peter Medina, C-MOLD's Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, who drives the worldwide sales, marketing and operations efforts based in Louisville, Kentucky.

CIMP evolved due to a growing market need by companies in the plastics manufacturing and engineering industries. In the 1970's and 1980's leading companies were undergoing a major conversion from metal to plastics in product manufacturing, especially in the automotive and appliance industries. These companies had a difficult time making a successful transition to plastics and sought help, research, and solutions from CIMP.

"Companies are constantly pushing the envelope to develop new plastics materials but the materials are more and more sophisticated and harder to use," says Dr. Wang. "At CIMP we have successfully helped the industry understand plastics and plastics behavior. At C-MOLD, we are bringing to the marketplace technology and simulation tools that help users work with difficult and sophisticated plastic materials."

The idea behind CIMP was to place injection molding , then largely dependent on "rule of thumb" techniques, on a firm scientific basis. The overwhelming industry question to answer at the time was, would it be possible to understand and predict the complex interactions that occur in the injection-molding process. CIMP answered the questions through extensive research and has successfully aided the plastics industry in understanding plastics and plastics behavior.

As a spin-off of this Ivy League consortium, C-MOLD has established itself as the recognized technology leader in Advanced Plastics CAE. By combining world renowned engineers and software developers, C-MOLD has achieved a position of global leadership.

Today, C-MOLD provides simulation tools for the following ten molding processes:

-- Injection molding - 32% of all plastics are converted into

products using the injection molding process. Common products

utilizing this process include interior and exterior

automotive parts, medical devices, appliance components,

consumer electronics devices, toys, housewares, and the list

goes on.

-- Gas-assisted injection molding - a popular new process used

predominantly for television cabinets, appliance and

automotive components, and anywhere a reduction in material

and production cycle is necessary and desired.

-- Co-injection molding - used in manufacturing automotive body

panels, computer housings, outdoor furniture, and is ideal

for the use of recycled materials.

-- Injection/compression molding - used in manufacturing compact

disks, contact lenses, automotive lighting, and cellular phones.

-- Thermoset injection molding - used in manufacturing electric

applications such as plugs, sockets, and switch boxes, and

automotive under-hood applications which must withstand very

high temperatures.

-- RIM/SRIM - used in manufacturing automotive bumpers and

fascias, rail car components, and other industrial

applications.

-- Resin transfer molding - used in aerospace applications, boat

hulls, storage tanks, construction components, and automotive

assembly frames.

-- Microchip encapsulation - used in manufacturing semiconductors

for computer and consumer electronic industries.

-- Blow molding - used in manufacturing children's toys, bottles,

and automotive fuel tanks.

-- Thermoforming - used in manufacturing aerospace products,

product packaging, etc.

As another unique marketplace offering for its customers, C-MOLD developed sophisticated Learning Centers in both Louisville and Boston to meet the growing needs of the plastics industry. The United States has the best educated labor pool in the plastics industry, however, the current educational system has been unable to keep pace with the need for industry professionals to understand the critical questions surrounding plastics and plastic behavior. C-MOLD's Learning Centers bridge the gap between the need for knowledge and the tools and resources necessary to acquire the knowledge. At the Learning Centers, users are personally coached by experienced plastics engineers, receiving hands-on experience with both CAE simulation and actual molding machines. Demonstrating leadership in the area of industry education has shown C-MOLD to be much more than a software development enterprise.

In addition to the Advanced Plastics CAE leadership role, C-MOLD has received recent recognition, as the pioneer in Desktop Plastics CAE. Desktop Plastics CAE is a monumental change of events for plastics designers and manufacturers. Designers are working on designs that will, in many instances, be produced in plastic, yet only a small percentage of these designers are using any method to ensure their designs are manufacturable. For virtually every industry segment, Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) is pervasive and the norm. Desktop simulation is an innovative extension of this technology trend.

It is believed that there are one million potential users of high-end and mid-range solid modeling CAD programs in the world today. The number of design engineers specifying CAD/CAM/CAE products increased dramatically over a five year period from 1990 through 1995. According to a Simmons Market

Research study in The Changing World of the OEM Design Engineer, there was a 31% increase in CAD/CAM/CAE engineers specifying types of products, signifying a rapid expansion of the market for C-MOLD's Desktop product line.

OEM plastics design engineers are concerned with many critical design issues including ease of manufacture, higher quality, lower cost of project/manufacturing, lower parts count, reduced size, and lighter weight. Design engineers are continuously pushed to compress the time to market, while improving the manufacturability of the their products. With approximately 113,000 new products being designed and approximately 113,000 more existing products being redesigned each year, design engineers have important needs that may only be met with technology well-integrated into the product development and delivery system. C-MOLD's family of simulation products and tools meets critical design engineering issues and helps design engineers solve real problems in a timely manner.

"Virtually every company in the Fortune 1000 has made a huge investment in CAD to expedite the product design process and get a competitive advantage," says Mr. Medina. "But very few have yet to do anything to ensure all of these new product designs are readily manufacturable. The next logical step for these companies is Desktop Plastics CAE simulation. Their designers can design more efficiently, while concurrently insuring manufacturability, thereby saving time and dollars."

With Dr. C-MOLD, brought to market in 1996, C-MOLD met a market need for a sophisticated yet simple, user friendly, cost effective, desktop technology tool for plastics professionals who do not routinely use or have access to CAD software. Manufacturing engineers and field support personnel, for example. This is an ideal decision making tool for the conference room as well as the plant floor. It runs on your laptop or desktop PC, it's portable, and it can be used to resolve design problems, evaluate alternatives and even optimize the setup of the molding machine itself, in minutes.

C-MOLD continued its run with Desktop Plastics CAE tools with the emergence in 1997 of 3D QuickFill, a breakthrough solids-based plastic simulation that shows designers and manufacturers how to deliver the best plastic part design possible. 3D QuickFill provides answers to a designer's critical questions while working with a model they develop using popular CAD programs like Auto CAD, Pro/Engineer and Solid Works.

Evaluating different plastic materials for a specific design is also important to the designer so C-MOLD researched which materials are most important to injection molding and they built a system which allows users to develop custom databases for their designs. There is no training required to use the software and once the system reveals potential design or manufacturing problems, 3D QuickFill provides immediate solution advice. It delivers real engineering feedback to the user in minutes.

"We are in the business of making the plastics and manufacturing industries more efficient and effective," says Professor Wang. "We provide total problem solutions which is why we design desktop tools for both the parts designers and the manufacturing engineers."

"We have demonstrated that Desktop Plastics CAE is not only viable, but it is vital. Our products help companies like Delphi, Motorola, Intel, BASF and many more bring multiple products to market each year," says Mr. Medina.

"Time, cost and plastics efficiencies are critically important to our users and we have developed sophisticated tools to ensure that products are accurately and efficiently manufacturable. We have put in place the responsible usage of plastics, eliminating excess hassle, waste and time."

C-MOLD has taken the demand for superiority in the technology sector very seriously. As the largest marketer of CAE technology via the Internet, C-MOLD is providing immediate access to its Desktop products to everyone, anywhere in the world. By using the Internet to distribute technology to the global plastics industry, C-MOLD has made it easy for desktop tools to fit into any engineers environment. Critical, time-sensitive software can now be placed immediately in the hands of those that need it to solve real problems.

"Whether it is in India, England, China, Brazil, or anywhere around the world, our users are downloading C-MOLD products from the Internet to advance their knowledgebase, their skills, and their productivity," says Mr. Medina "We are making it easier for our customers to learn more about our products, test our products, witness our aggressive product development process, and efficiently interact with our customer support group."

By providing its dedicated user community with breakthrough products, superior customer service, extensive technology support and training, C-MOLD is leading the global plastics industry in providing integrated CAE simulations. With more than 1,250 customers and nearly 25,000 products in use worldwide, C-MOLD continues to focus on emerging trends in technology. Its operations are strategically centered on product development and distribution, Internet access, and customer response. The customer's response is C-MOLD's vehicle to be market driven.

"With our unique Internet distribution system and our fast-paced development cycle, our products continue to stand up to the expectations of the customer," says Dr. Wang. "We have put the systems in place to meet the needs of our diverse user community."

C-MOLD's headquarters in Ithaca, New York house the primary research and development functions while the Louisville, Kentucky office drives sales, marketing, operations and all of C-MOLD's user training courses held at C-MOLD's Learning Center. The privately held company also has operations in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Taiwan and China with distributors and value-added resellers in Asia, Europe, South Africa, India and Australia.

For additional C-MOLD company and product information, please visit our web site www.cmold.com

CONTACT: Shandwick, Louisville

Karen Sherman, 502/891-2500 or [e-mail]