What Role Do the Price and Your Web Site Play?
Add to this phenomenon the evolution of manufacturing into a global ecosystem, and a perfect storm has formed that places enormous challenges on you and all North American SMMs. […]
What are Micro Moldmaking Rules?
Rule 1: Mold tolerances become more critical.As parts get smaller, any miscalculations have a significantly greater impact. When requesting a micro mold, aim for 10 percent part tolerances, as opposed to the 25 to 50 percent level commonly seen in macro molds, […]
Performance Is the Key for offshore moldmaker
It’s unlikely that a moldmaker who is close in proximity to his customer or molder will take any shortcuts because when a performance issue pops up, they’ll be stuck with no-charge fixes. […]
How to repair flash
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat” applies to more than just the exfoliation of felines; it’s also applicable to mold repairs. Although the goal is always to make an effective repair, often there is more than one way to accomplish it. As in anything that has to be managed, the best choice [...]
How to get a good mold cooling
“Radical” is not a word one expects to hear from a plastic injection molding company. Yet, it pops up more than once in conversation with steven, CAD/CAM application engineer for first-rate mold company. […]
How to choose maintenance method for mold
Some maintenance methods are really ingenious and work great when trying to simplify a job such as using a cone-shaped jig to slide o-rings onto cores and cavities or a special set of cutters used to pull insulated runners off probe tips without damaging them. Or how to use a common flow meter to detect [...]
3-D laser scanning helps inspection and reverse engineering
Traditional techniques for making a mold require several time-consuming steps that can reduce how flexible and diversified a company can be. If the moldmaking process could be accelerated, moldmakers could build more tools for different products or variations of products in a fraction of the time. In these tough economic times, diversification can mean the [...]
What is Rapid prototyping?
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. […]
What is Automotive design?
Automotive design is the profession involved in the development of the appearance, and to some extent the ergonomics, of motor vehicles or more specifically road vehicles. This most commonly refers to automobiles but also refers to motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans. […]
Diagnose Mold Issues and Part Quality Variations
If you review the molds you’ve built and sampled over the years along with the new molds you may be sampling today, you will probably have a list of recurring problems (flash, non-fills, unable to pack the parts, dimensional variations, warp, broken core pins, poor cosmetics, etc.). […]