Patent ID: 6993463

Claim:
A method of designing a primary geometry for a powder pressing application, comprising: generating a primary geometry of a component to be formed by powder pressing using a computer program through a user interface wherein the primary geometry is developed using a combination of predefined axisymmetric geometric shapes, said axisymmetric geometric shapes selected from cylinders, cones, toroids, spheres, parallelepipeds, ellipsoids, and polyhedrons, and transition radii to simulate said primary geometry, said predefined axisymmetric geometric shapes having variable dimensions; developing a finite element mesh representing said primary geometry, said finite element mesh generated automatically and internally through said computer program; defining pressing boundary conditions; defining a powder and powder material properties to be pressed in said primary geometry; calculating deformation characteristics of said powder and primary geometry using a deformation, nonlinear, quasi-static finite element code; and evaluating said deformation characteristics to determine the acceptability of said primary geometry.