Accurate Die Design Software, Inc.
Accurate Die Design Software, Inc. (ADDS) was founded as Accurate Die Design, Inc. in 2001 by Ray Proeber. By that time, Ray had been working in the tool & die and metal stamping industries for 24 years, starting in 1977 as an apprentice tool & die maker. His first 15 years in the field were spent on the bench building dies; the last 10 years of that initial period also included a great deal of time doing die design on the drawing board in the evening at home. The following 9 years were spent in management serving as a tool department manager and later as the vice president of a Milwaukee area metal stamper.
Ray started ADDS with the intention of becoming a single-employee contract die design firm, since it seemed obvious to him that there would be a shortage of good die designers in the future. He reasoned that with fewer workers going into the trade—along with tool & die making becoming more of an assembly line process than it was in the past— people would be less apt to “naturally” become die designers as he had done.
While AutoCAD® and DIEMAKER™ (a third-party package for die design) were purchased early on, within the first year Ray realized that there was a problem. He relates: “All the simple stuff went overseas, and I was left getting lots of 3D models that I didn’t have any way of designing dies for.” So, in 2002 he purchased SOLIDWORKS™ 3D CAD software and became a Certified SOLIDWORKS Professional later that year.
Three large automotive-type dies were designed and 100% detailed during part of that year using SOLIDWORKS. However, it quickly became apparent to Ray that he needed something to make him more efficient while doing die design. When using SOLIDWORKS, he found that he sorely missed many of the tools he had used when doing die design in 2D using his third-party die design package for AutoCAD®.
By January 2003, there were two different die design software packages being developed specifically to streamline progressive die design using SOLIDWORKS—one in China and one in France. In September of that year, Ray traveled to China to be trained in one of those two software packages; however, within days after returning from the training, a decision was made to abandon that package. (Today there are literally dozens of companies that have abandoned that other die design software package in favor of LogoPress. As of 2023, the company in the U.S. that sold, trained, and supported this Chinese product ceased their relationship with them, so today there is no support or other representative left in the U.S. for this Chinees die design product.)
It was also in 2003 that ADDS became a reseller for a company that developed flattening, analysis, and simulation software. For the next 20 years ADDS was the only North American reseller for this company, focusing mainly on their incremental simulation software, In March 2023, after 20 years, ADDS ended its relationship with this company.
A second die designer was added in 2003 in addition to Ray, and in 2004 a third die designer was hired, resulting in three full-time, experienced die designers on staff.
In 2004, LogoPress die design software was officially introduced into the United States at SOLIDWORKS World in Boston. Ray was surprised to learn that LogoPress (which had been in business since 1989) was formed specifically to develop die design software in France long before he started searching for specialized die design tools for SOLIDWORKS. In late 2004, ADDS was contracted by LogoPress to integrate inch standard catalog die components into LogoPress die design software, which up until that time contained only metric components. They also started promoting LogoPress products.
In 2005 ADDS became the U.S. Technical Center for LogoPress products, providing all sales, training and support for LogoPress in the U.S. and parts of Canada and Mexico. Over the next five years the software business grew, and the die design services area of the business decreased. Consequently, in 2010 the company stopped providing die design as a service so that they could focus entirely on the software part of the business. To reflect that evolution, in 2016 the original company name Accurate Die Design, Inc. was changed to Accurate Die Design Software, Inc.
In July 2023 ADDS became a reseller for Stampack GmbH, a forming simulation software developer based in Germany, making ADDS the distributor for Stampack products in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Ray says: “We had been watching Stampack closely since 2016 when they came to the U.S. from Barcelona, Spain to meet with us and train a couple of our guys in their software. We saw the huge difference in accuracy between the shell simulation that is common in the industry and the solid simulation that is in Stampack (Stampack includes both shell and solid solvers), but ultimately the time was not right for us to move away from the incremental forming simulation software we had been selling since 2003. In 2018 Stampack was sold to a German company that had been a distributor for it since 2010. Stampack GmbH took the product off the market and spent two years completely overhauling the user interface, specifically to make it toolmaker friendly, as well as to streamline the code which ultimately made the solid solving time five times faster.”
Over the years additional employees were added to support their growth. Today, Accurate Die Design Software’s focus remains providing 3D die design software sales (including both one-step forming simulation software as well as incremental forming simulation software), training, and support to the tool & die and metal stamping industries.