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Forming and Costing Solutions

Established in 1989 as a Technology Development Center for the metal stamping industry, Forming Technologies Incorporated (FTI) is a world leader in providing OEM’s and part suppliers with innovative software and training solutions designed to reduce the development time and cost of parts and tooling. For many customers, these solutions have resulted in millions of dollars in cost savings.

FTI’s Forming and Costing Software Solutions have been subjected to years of validation and refinement. It’s speed and ease of use empower the user to identify potential product, process and tooling changes, as well as cost improvements prior to completing the part or tooling design.

CATFORM is based on FTI’s popular FASTFORM formability analysis software. It’s integration with CATIA V5 provides a powerful tool for identifying formability problems and blank shapes in sheet metal parts without leaving CATIA’s environment.

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Formability Analysis

FTI’s powerful solver determines where a part will split or wrinkle, how much it will thin out, the amount of stretch in the panel and what type of stretch it will be. It accounts for differences in material, press direction, friction and holding forces.

Blank Prediction

CATFORM predicts very accurate blank shapes for any sheet metal parts including drawn parts with significant material stretch. This blank shape can be used for early cost analysis, nesting to optimize material usage and even for die tryout.

Holding Forces (Forming Conditions)

CATFORM provides a simple and fast means of applying Blankholder forces to the analysis. This allows the user to quickly evaluate a variety of different forming scenarios while designing the part or tool. This tool also assists in determining more accurate blank shapes.

Fast and Accurate Solution

Industry benchmarks confirm analyses can take only minutes using CATFORM. The software provides fast and accurate solutions, along with a wealth of post processing and visualization options. It is subject to continuous field testing against controlled experiments, production tooling, as well as incremental FEM programs.

Powerful Meshing and Repair

CATFORM uses CATIA’s meshing tools so experienced users can utilize the power and flexibility of CATIA’s Advanced Meshing Tools while new users can generate results quickly and accurately using the simpler Octree Mesher. The mesh repair system will automatically repair any mesh, eliminating the need for manually fixing meshing problems prior to solving.

Parts with Extensive Undercut

Most formability analysis packages currently on the market have difficulty dealing with parts with undercut or negative draft angles. This is not a problem for CATFORM. Our software has no problem analyzing parts with extensive undercut.

Features:

• Develops accurate blank shapes.
• Introduces feasibility criteria during early product development.
• Simulation results include safety zones, forming zones, splitting, thinning, wrinkling, thickening, major/minor strain and optimal blank shape.
• Supports tailor welded blanks with multiple weld lines.
• Customizable materials database provides flexibility required to simulate any material.
• All results are stored in CATAnalysis file for PLM intergration eliminating multiple files.
• Export Nastran file thickness results for subsequent crash analysis.
• Fast, intuitive interface makes the software extremely user-friendly.