Sustainability in Practice with Solid Edge

Wisdom James Murombo has been using Solid Edge throughout his engineering studies at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and to support his internships at local manufacturing companies. We previously blogged about Wisdom’s use of Solid Edge for generative design.

As part of his internship at CAFCA, a manufacturer of electrical cables in Harare, Wisdom designed components needed for manufacturing plastic hosepipes. According to Wisdom, “We saw an opportunity to recycle PVC chips that are a byproduct of the process used to add protective plastic covers to electrical cables. We looked for a suitable product to manufacture and decided on a flexible garden hose.” Working with Steven Mabika, CAFCA’s recycling champion and plastics specialist, Wisdom designed a new die that could be installed on an existing extrusion machine.

Wisdom is an engineering student at NUST, Zimbabwe

An important consideration for this project was to design a longer inner die channel to reduce swelling of the polymer as it exited the die face. Swelling occurs due to the “memory” effect of the polymer melt. Splines were also added to the die to create ribs along the axis of the hose that aid the grip of the end-user. Engineering drawings were created to communicate the design to the CAFCA die shop.

3D CAD model and engineering drawing for extrusion die

Layout of the extrusion die, cutting blade and collection device

Wisdom says, “Having access to Solid Edge has helped me considerably in executing these projects. Not just for designing the components, but also for creating the 2D drawings for manufacturing. I could also perform stress analysis to validate the strength of critical components.”

According to Steven Mabika, “Wisdom’s design skills gave us a huge stride in completing these two projects. He was able to produce the 3D models and working drawings very quickly. This made it easy to communicate with and make informed decisions when working with other team members in the workshop.”

Siemens strives to be a world leader in sustainability and is excited to have students like Wisdom using Siemens software solutions to solve real-world design challenges. In this case, using Solid Edge to design systems that use recycled materials and that decrease the consumption of oil-based plastics.