COSMOS helps redesign new heat sink in the nick of time

Company Baldor Electric Company Industry Electrical/Electronics Location U.S.A. Product Used COSMOSDesignSTAR Type of Analysis Thermal More Details

The Challenge
Baldor produces die-cast heat sinks for variable-speed drives. Its heat sink-making tool, a $120,000 piece of equipment, was nearing a breakdown. Baldor's engineers saw replacing the tool as an opportunity to redesign its heat sink. But they had to redesign the heat sink quickly, before the tool failed and production came to a halt. They also had to redesign it correctly, because any mistake would cost the tool manufacturer $5,000-$10,000 to fix.

The Solution
Baldor's mechanical engineer drew the heat sink in Autodesk Mechanical Desktop as a 3D model and analyzed it in COSMOSDesignSTAR. After each pass, he altered the model, then ran it through COSMOSDesignSTAR again. In about a month, he did the analyses, made the changes, and sent the new design to the toolmaker. Improving the heat sink by trial and error, calculating the variables manually, and gaining confidence in the design might've taken them six months instead of one.

Summary and Metrics

• Reduced analysis time from 6 months to 1 month.
• Final design achieved higher horsepower rating with room to spare.

"I'm really happy with the results. The design time was greatly reduced. I don't think the other programs could've handled this because it was such a complex problem." Curtis Racher, Mechanical Engineer