DS SolidWorks Helps UK-based Manufacturer
Use Advanced ‘Green’ Design
To Maintain A Technical Advantage
CAD And Fluid Dynamic Software Enables
Henry Technologies To Keep Costs Low
While Producing Environmentally Friendly Products
The company uses SolidWorks 3D CAD software to design refrigeration safety valves that meet stringent European Union (EU) standards for refrigerant loss. Also SolidWorks® Flow Simulation software enables the company’s staff to perfect designs before they go to production, anticipating failures or problem areas when fixing them still costs virtually nothing. Henry Technologies developed a new line of pressure relief valves to outperform inferior products that don’t meet the same level of EU regulations.
“European standards restrict the amount that the pressure in a refrigeration system can drop – the amount of refrigerant it can lose – and if we can design to that spec we have a competitive advantage over products that are lower cost but technically inferior,” said Henry Technologies Design Engineer Jordan Gronkowski. “It’s good for the environment and it can also save customers a lot of money because some European countries tax refrigerant heavily and they need to minimize loss.”
“We invested in Flow Simulation as a testing tool. Prototyping is quite expensive only to find out that something doesn’t work,” Gronkowski said. “We use the software to simulate different levels of pressure depending on how widely the valve is open. We test the compression of the spring and the way the components interact, as well as the strength of the parts under pressure. We can test through the software very quickly and efficiently, much more so than with physical prototypes. To produce a physical prototype means having a machine down for anywhere from two to four days to program the new components. With corrections and iterations, that can easily stretch into a week. On the computer, we can do the same testing in a few hours.”
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