• Number of cavities: By default, the number of mold cavities is the maximum number of cavities that can fit on the selected machine. With this option, you can override the default and specify the number of cavities, or direct aPriori to calculate the number of cavities that minimizes total cost. See Number of Mold Cavities for more information.

• Mold Material: This PSO is defined for the moldmaking processes, and allows you to select from among the mold materials specified by the process’s associated tool shop. The default the material is specified by the tool shop field Default Tool Material Name. VPE administrators can view and customize these settings. The starting point VPEs use the following defaults:

• Sand Additive Type: This PSO is defined for the moldmaking and coremaking processes, and allows you to select from among the additive types specified in the lookup table tblSandAdditives. The default additive type is None, which indicates that no additive is used.

• Sand Additive Percent: This PSO is defined for the moldmaking and coremaking processes, and allows you to enter the percentage of sand that should consist of additive. The default additive percentage is specified in the entry for the current additive type in the lookup table tblSandAdditives. The default additive type is None, which indicates that no additive is used. See also the PSO Sand Additive Type.

• Sand Cure Time: This PSO is defined for manual moldmaking processes, and allows you to enter the portion of the per-part process time required for curing. The default is specified by the cost model variable sandCureTimeManualFloor (30 minutes in starting point VPEs), sandCureTimeManualPit (45 minutes in starting point VPEs), or sandCureTimeManualStd (10 minutes in starting point VPEs).

• Number of Ingates: By default, there is one ingate for every 6 inches of part length, in starting point VPEs. This distance is specified by the cost model variable ingateGap. This is the maximum distance between ingates for a given cavity. With this setup option, you can override the default, and specify the number of ingates explicitly. See also Gating System Components.

• Number of Runners: By default, a single runner is assumed if the mold has a single cavity. For molds with multiple cavities, the default number of runners is half the number of cavities (rounded up to the nearest whole number of runners). With this setup option, you can override the default and specify the number of runners explicitly. See also Gating System Components.

• Gating Ratio: By default, the cost model assumes that cross-sectional area of the sprue base equals that of the runner, and equals the sum of the total cross-sectional area of all the ingates. This setup option allows you to override the default and specify ratios for the cross sectional areas. See Choke, Sprue, Runner, and Ingate Area Ratios for more information.