Details: Changes to Baselines that DO NOT affect Customer VPEs
The following changes are available in the aPriori Baseline VPEs only. If you wish to take advantage of these new capabilities, the VPE needs to be upgraded to the most recent Cost Model version. Please contact your VPE Admin or aPriori Account Manager to plan work.
• Refractory Coating: for Gravity Die Casting routings, refractory coating and drying are now assumed to be applied to all cores by default in starting point VPEs. Compared to the previous release, this can result in increased costs and times, depending on the number and sizes of cores. For piece part cost, increases of around 1%-5% are typical; increases up to around 15% have been observed. You can manually exclude refractory coating from your routing, if desired.
• Tooling Cost and Tool Life: In previous releases, tooling cost calculations assumed that a single tool lasts long enough to produce the production volume specified in any scenario. In this release, the cost model estimates the number of parts that can be produced with a given tool before it wears to the point that it needs to be replaced. Based on that estimate, the cost model determines the number of tools required to manufacture the specified production volume, and accounts for that number of tools in total hard tooling cost.
Tool life is accounted for in the tooling cost calculations for the following processes:
o Gravity Die Casting
o High Pressure Die Casting
o Trim
Tool-life estimation is based on part material, tool material, and tool coating type. For a given costing, either the formula Dependencies or Investment tab displays the number of tools assumed by tooling cost calculations.
With default production volumes (5,500 parts annually for 5 years), hard tooling cost is not affected by this change, as only one tool is required. With production volumes that require multiple tools, hard tooling cost increases compared to previous releases.
• Improved Estimation of Tool Coating and Heat Treatment Costs: this release includes improved data for tool material density, tool material unit cost, and tool coating unit cost. As a result, hard tooling cost has been observed to decrease by an average of 2%-3%, compared to the previous release.
The Casting - Die process group may be impacted by changes in the Machining process group. Please review the impact assessment in the Secondary Machining process group.