Frequently Asked Questions

A members-only engineering platform for plastic injection mold designers, AM bureaus, and tooling buyers working on conformal cooling. It bundles 36 calculators and tools, 6 step-by-step wizards, 35 technical articles, 35 case studies, a directory of 111 verified providers, and an AI design assistant — all focused on conformal cooling for injection molding inserts.

Engineers and decision-makers who design, qualify, or buy conformal-cooled mold inserts: mold designers running channel layouts and DfAM checks, production engineers calculating cycle improvements and ROI, AM service bureaus quoting LPBF-printed inserts, and buyers building business cases for capex committees.

ConformalCooling.info is powered by Cool — a Metal AM company specialising in conformal cooling design and manufacturing. The platform was built as an internal toolkit for Conforma Cool partners and engineering teams.

There is no pricing page. The platform is members-only and invitation-based — there are no plans, trials, or upsells. Approved partners use the full toolkit at no charge.

The engineering tooling on the platform — wizards that touch real material data, AI proposals, supplier directory — is calibrated for working professionals in the AM and injection molding mold industry. Keeping access curated lets us run the platform without ad-tech, telemetry, or paid tiers.

Email info@conformacool.com with a brief note about your role and project. Approved partners are provisioned manually and receive credentials via email.

No. Sign-in is open to members only; there is no public sign-up.

Yes — once you have an active account, you can sign in with any of those providers as long as your account email matches the registered one. We don't create new accounts via OAuth; your email must already be on the access list.

Use the 'Forgot password?' link on the login page. We email a reset link to your registered address. If you've connected a Google/LinkedIn/Microsoft/GitHub account, you can also sign in via that provider.

Email info@conformacool.com and your row is deleted. Saved calculations and wizard sessions are removed in the same operation (database cascade).

Calculators are single-purpose physics calcs — Reynolds, cooling time, ROI, cycle comparison. Tools are focused engineering utilities — single-step (steel selector) or multi-input (mold spec matcher, DfAM checker). Wizards are multi-step workflows that chain calculators end-to-end and produce a single PDF deliverable. Use a wizard when you're making one engineering decision (size a system, build a business case, qualify an insert).

Yes — every wizard run is autosaved on each step. Resume any in-progress run from the /wizards page or your profile. Completed runs are kept indefinitely; you can re-download the PDF or delete them at any time.

Not via the platform itself — sharing was an explicit decision to keep wizard outputs member-only. Download the PDF and circulate it through your own channels.

You write a free-text part description (geometry, plastic, hot spots, finish requirements). Claude returns a JSON proposal with channel diameter, pitch, depth, count, topology, target Reynolds, and target flow rate, plus engineering rationale and DfAM warnings. You can edit any field before continuing through circuit balance and warpage check.

Treat the AI proposal as a starting point, not a release-ready specification. The numbers fall in published engineering ranges, but every proposal must be validated with full CFD/FEA simulation and prototype trials before tooling release. The exported PDF makes this disclaimer explicit on every page.

Cooling channels in a mold insert that follow the part geometry — typically printed via LPBF — instead of conventional straight-drilled lines. Closer, more uniform cooling reduces cycle time, warpage, and reject rates. There's a primer article in the library if you want the long version.

Cooling time uses Ballman's 1-D analytical equation. Reynolds is standard ρvD/μ for circular channels. Pressure drop combines Darcy-Weisbach with the Blasius friction factor for turbulent flow plus K-factor losses for fittings. ROI is cycle-savings × annual volume × per-part value, with NPV at 10% discount over 5 years. Every calculator and wizard cites the equation it uses inline.

The standards database includes 15 OEM mold standards: VW, BMW, Ford, Renault, HASCO, BEKO/Arçelik (S01–S16), Uddeholm STAVAX SUPREME, plus shared ASTM/ISO references. The Insert Specification wizard cross-checks your design against the OEM standard you pick.

11 AM-compatible tool steels (MS1, H13, Corrax, CX, W360, CuCrZr, plus 4 conventional grades), 18 injection plastics with thermal diffusivity, melt/mold temp ranges, and shrinkage data, and 3 coolant fluids (water, water + 30% glycol, thermal oil).

The analytical models reproduce published case-study results within typical scatter — ±10–25% for cooling time and cycle improvement is normal. Reynolds and pressure-drop are exact for the assumed geometry. ROI and NPV are entirely driven by your inputs — they're only as accurate as your cycle-time and volume estimates.

Account data and wizard sessions live in a Neon Postgres database under the cc.users, cc.saved_calculations, and cc.wizard_sessions tables. PDF documents are generated on-demand and not persisted server-side.

Only you — and the platform admin (info@conformacool.com) for support purposes. We don't share or aggregate user data, and there is no analytics on individual user activity.

Yes. Each session has a delete button on /wizards and on your profile page under Saved Calculations.

No. The platform uses Vercel Analytics for aggregate page-view counts (no PII), no Google Analytics, no advertising trackers. Cookies in scope: one session cookie, one welcome-tour cookie, and short-lived OAuth flow cookies — that's it.