As any mold’s integrity is paramount to output quality and success, this is where measurement machines play a critical role. Shops use these machines to verify a mold’s accuracy or the finished product created by the mold. For example, the accuracy demanded by manufacturers of medical equipment and tools, such as gears, syringes, tubing and [...]
Mold manufacturing is an increasingly challenging industry. Whether you have pivoted to supplying the medical industry or are a longtime automotive mold/die producer, you have probably seen where the market is heading. Parts and designs are getting more complex. Customers are pushing for shorter production times. Molds require greater degrees of precision and exact surface [...]
With plastic injection molding being one of the most commonly-used plastic formation techniques with numerous industrial applications, the market is continually expanding and evolving. Custom made plastic injection molding parts present the perfect solution for numerous industries that are striving to produce a great volume of high-quality and cost-efficient parts. Such plastics are used in [...]
Although often shrouded in overly complicated financial terms, business valuations are generally straightforward. As a baseline, companies are worth the amount of cash they generate each year, times some “multiple” heavily influenced by the attractiveness of the relevant industry. Within each industry, larger companies will trade at higher multiples than will smaller ones. In today's [...]
If you’re importing from China and researching around the topic, you’ll have likely heard of sourcing agents. In this post, we will be exploring the use of sourcing agents and helping you to determine whether using a sourcing agent would benefit your business. Finding a high quality manufacturer is the often one of the first [...]
Most mold shops are well acquainted with the visible costs of poor quality. Still, these are just the tip of the iceberg compared to the deeper and more intractable invisible costs lurking below the waterline. Shops that think of quality as only a cost center enforce the incorrect perception that the quality function is essentially [...]
Industry 4.0 has been getting a lot of attention from molders as they look to take advantage of connecting processing information with production information to efficiently produce quality parts on time. It only makes sense that as the 4.0 culture continues to grow within the molding industry, the mold repair side of the business starts [...]
Conformal cooling is prevalent in moldmaking. A primary driver of conformal cooling is the ability of a cooling circuit to follow the contour of the plastic molding cavity surface, yielding consistent cooling. […]
Designing molds with additive tooling implementation in mind requires blending traditional mold standards with innovative new ideas of what is possible to push the limits of mold performance. Additive tooling refers to the use of 3D printing (e.g. direct metal laser sintering or DMLS) to produce mold inserts out of metal, specifically tool steels, that [...]
In the molding cycle, cooling efficiency is undoubtedly a very important factor, and it’s impact on mass production is very significant, many factors impact process inconsistency. […]