Design for manufacturability is not a new concept, nor is the use of digital solutions for the many steps in mold design. Yet it remains a daunting task to rapidly produce cost-effective manufacturing molds for complex organically-shaped products. […]
1. Intricate details involved in part manufacture. The amount of effort and engineering (mechanical, manufacturing, industrial, chemical, metallurgy/materials, polymer, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and even electrical)—regardless of required part tolerance—that goes into each and every mold to produce a quality, aesthetically pleasing, flash-free injection molded component. […]
It is big news when an OEM decides to move a substantial number of existing molds from one molding operation (either their own in-house/captive facility or an outsourced molder) to a selected custom molder. […]
A transfer program management team from the receiving molder usually consists of the following personnel: […]
The following five-step, streamlined process is indicative of the associated tasks involved. […]
During the past three years, we have seen many tool shops suffer from servicing just one industry. The danger of being so specialized is being buried with work when the market is good—forcing one to ignore opportunities from new customers in different business areas—or drying up entirely when sales are slow for an extended period [...]
The word automation means different things to different people, but when related to CAD/CAM there is a more common view. It means reducing menu clicks for frequent tasks. In a production environment, a frequent task could be something as simple as programming a certain type of groove on a turned profile. Saving these menu selections [...]
Medical parts have different requirements than other molded articles, and as a result tooling engineers over the years have pioneered new mold materials, coatings and mold maintenance practices. […]
A review of machining options for tapered rib processing, typically found in plastic injection and die cast molds. Applications involving tapered ribs are usually associated with plastic injection and die cast molds. For many years the process used for creating tapered ribs was EDM; however, utilizing programming processes that incorporate high-speed machining (HSM) principles can [...]
Today’s mold manufacturer is often looking for time and cost savings on many levels. There are solutions—whether it is to reduce development times, accelerate the configuration of entire initial sample test reports or shorten reaction times for damage analyses. […]