Massachusetts Company Saves More Than $500,000 With COSMOS Analysis Software.Faced with Soaring Material Costs, LeBARON Foundry Streamlined Designs, Lightening Manhole Covers and Frames by as Much as 50 Pounds CONCORD, Mass. -- The humble manhole cover is easy to overlook - unless you work for LeBARON Foundry of Brockton, Mass., the dominant supplier of cast iron products to New England's construction market. The 150-year-old company pours 100 tons of molten iron a day to supply the region with nearly all of its manhole and sewer drain covers. Although its products are low-tech, the company has used high technology, specifically SolidWorks([R]) and COSMOS([R]) software, to great advantage. "We're saving more than $500,000 on raw material costs annually because of design work performed in SolidWorks3D CAD software and facilitated by COSMOSanalysis software," said LeBARON Foundry President Steve Clinch. The story began in December 2003, when scrap metal prices spiked, tripling over the next six months, thus tripling LeBARON's raw material costs. The company had no way to pass along these costs because it was locked into long-term contracts with municipalities. Fortuitously, Clinch had just invested in SolidWorks Office Premium, which includes COSMOSWorks([R]) Designer software, in hopes of updating the company's manual product testing processes. Those processes employed hydraulic presses applying upwards of 60 tons of force to determine their strength. Clinch set up simulations in COSMOSWorks Designer, built samples in the resulting geometries, and tested them against real-world conditions to establish validity. He quickly determined that many of its best-selling products were significantly over-designed - i.e., they were thicker than they needed to be. Using SolidWorks and COSMOSWorks Designer, Clinch and his team quickly redesigned a wide variety of the products in less than two days each. This process shaved as much as 50 pounds of material from a typical manhole cover. It was a savings of as much as 25 percent by weight without sacrificing safety. The company recouped the company's projected shortfall, estimated at more than $500,000 in the first year alone. "Sure, we could have done this without COSMOS," he said. "We could have built a pattern, made castings, noted when they broke, made a leaner pattern, and repeated the cycle ad nauseum until we ran out of time and money. It would have been a horrendously time-consuming and expensive process. With COSMOSWorks Designer, I was able to iterate it·er·ate tr.v. it·er·at·ed, it·er·at·ing, it·er·ates To say or perform again; repeat. See Synonyms at repeat. [Latin iter six different models in two afternoons until I came up with streamlined designs that still had more than adequate strength. Our work was simplified by an easy-to-use, relatively inexpensive finite element analysis Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computer simulation technique used in engineering analysis. It uses a numerical technique called the finite element method (FEM). There are many finite element software packages, both free and proprietary. product combined with an elegant 3D CAD package. I think the world of these products." LeBARON is now using SolidWorks and COSMOSWorks Designer to expand its product line to include custom configurations. "You'd think that after 15 decades there would be nothing more to say about manhole covers," said SolidWorks Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Rainer Gawlick. "What this story teaches us is that sharp minds using powerful tools can always design better products. Sometimes these improvements yield extraordinary benefits." LeBARON Foundry relies on authorized SolidWorks reseller CADD (Computer-Aided Design and Drafting) CAD systems with additional features for drafting, such as dimensioning and text entry. CADD - Computer Aided Detector Design: a project to develop standards and methods to allow cooperation between HEP Edge for ongoing software training, implementation, and support. About LeBARON Foundry LeBARON Foundry, Inc., first established in 1855, has poured gray iron castings to serve the needs of the construction industries of New England New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been so named by Capt. from its Brockton, Massachusetts Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. The population size was recored as 94,304 in the 2000 census, the size has roughly stayed about the same since[1]. The city and Plymouth are the county seats of Plymouth County. , facilities since 1911. The ultimate recycler, it turns all manner of scrap iron Noun 1. scrap iron - iron to be melted again and reworked atomic number 26, Fe, iron - a heavy ductile magnetic metallic element; is silver-white in pure form but readily rusts; used in construction and tools and armament; plays a role in the transport of oxygen by waste into manhole covers, storm-water grates, and trench-drain systems which it delivers to contractors and municipalities throughout the region. For more information on LeBARON Foundry visit www.lebaronfoundry.com or call 508-586-3130. About CADD Edge, Inc. CADD Edge, established in 1995, is the developer of the Mechanical Engineering Productivity Machine([TM]). The CADD Edge Productivity Machine enables engineers to design imaginative products fast with superior quality. Customized for industry-specific SolidWorks environments, this performance-driven machine is fueled by four components - auditing, implementation, multi-level training, and software utilities - all working together to help companies be first to deliver winning designs from concept to customer. For more information on CADD Edge, please contact the company at 508-475-2900 or visit http://www.caddedge.com About SolidWorks Corporation SolidWorks Corporation, a Dassault Systemes Dassault Systemes (Dassault Systèmes S.A.) (Pronounced - Dasoh) (NASDAQ: DASTY; Euronext: 13065) is a leading company specializing in 3D and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software. S.A. (Nasdaq: DASTY, Euronext Paris Euronext Paris is France's securities market, formerly known as the Paris Bourse, which merged with the Amsterdam and Brussels exchanges in September 2000 to form Euronext NV, which is the second largest exchange in Europe behind the London Stock Exchange. : #13065, DSY DSY Drum Storage Yard .PA) company, develops and markets software for design, analysis, and product data management. It is the leading supplier of 3D CAD technology, giving teams intuitive, high-performing software that helps them design better products. For the latest news, information, or an online demonstration, visit the company's Web site (www.solidworks.com) or call 1-800-693-9000 (outside of North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , call +1-978-371-5000). SolidWorks is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation. COSMOS and COSMOSWorks are registered trademarks of Structural Research & Analysis Corporation. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright (c) 2006 SolidWorks Corporation. Bookmark A stored location for quick retrieval at a later date. Web browsers provide bookmarks that contain the addresses (URLs) of favorite sites. Most electronic references, large text databases and help systems provide bookmarks that mark a location users want to revisit in the future. with de.li.cious, Submit this story to digg, Submit this story to slashdot Technorati tags SolidWorks, CAD, 3D CAD, MCAD MCAD Microsoft Certified Application Developer MCAD Mechanical Computer Aided Design MCAD Medium-Chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase (inherited metabolic disease) MCAD Minneapolis College of Art and Design , Design, Tech, Autodesk, AutoCAD, SolidEdge, COSMOSWorks Click here to listen to a podcast interview with LeBARON Foundry's Steve Clinch You can subscribe to Verb 1. subscribe to - receive or obtain regularly; "We take the Times every day" subscribe, take buy, purchase - obtain by purchase; acquire by means of a financial transaction; "The family purchased a new car"; "The conglomerate acquired a new company"; SolidWorks podcasts through iTunes, My Yahoo and sign up to an RSS feed Summaries of Web site content that are published in the RSS format for download. See RSS. linking you to new podcasts. |
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