Kavia Tooling Limited is a Yorkshire based British firm who specialise in the design and manufacture of complex or simple precision injection mould tools and plastic components. Continued investment in new injection moulding machines and advanced 3D design technology ensures efficient production, and that components are produced to the required tolerance levels.

Being a pioneering company, keen to develop advanced working processes and employ the most progressive technology, Kavia was the first company in the UK to trial and implement Autodesk Inventor Tooling 2009.

Autodesk Inventor Tooling is a new suite of technology for the European market and is developed specifically for mould tool design and manufacture. This suite has the specific tools required to create split lines, ejection points, fill marks, validate mould designs and much more. Inventor Tooling uses Moldflow technology, the industry standard, to ensure that all designs are optimized and high levels of anaylsis can be conducted to check flow and time to fill, air pockets and quality.

The business relationship between Quadra Solutions and Kavia began in 2005 and it was this relationship that led Kavia to Inventor Tooling. Although not officially released in the UK market, because of the strong relationship between Quadra and Autodesk and liaising closely with them, Quadra managed to secure a test version of the software for Chris Cole, head of design at Kavia. Chris had been assessing the tooling solutions available on the market and had evaluated Vero, Unigraphics and SolidWorks. When Chris was shown Inventor Tooling and saw how easy and intuitive the user interface is, he was convinced this was the solution they were looking for.  Chris explains….

“We have been working with Quadra for a number of years now, Steve Livsey from Quadra came in to see us when we were looking for technical support and someone to manage our subscriptions for us. I had been completing mould tool designs within Inventor and it could do it, but it was quite complicated and to teach someone else how to use my work flow would have been impossible. Steve has always worked closely with us and when we spoke to him about our issues with designing mould tools in standard Inventor, he suggested we have a look at Inventor Tooling. Steve Bedder from Autodesk and Quadra’s technical engineer Dave Wilkinson came in to show us Inventor Tooling, and we were sold. Inventor Tooling is the perfect solution at the perfect time for us. It is easy to use and with a bit of training I think I can get my guys up to speed with it very quickly.”