Mold cleaning is a process where major maintenance bottlenecks often occur because molds are pulled faster than they can be cleaned and made production-ready. I have visited plants where molds waiting to be cleaned line hallways and toolrooms, taking up valuable bench space. […]
Global Competition Like it or not, we are all working, competing, buying and selling in a global market, and remarks made by industry regarding the unfair competition from countries with lower labor costs, favorable monetary exchange rates, tax benefits or other motivating factors are common. […]
When one thinks of packaging a hundred images come to mind. It’s a huge and still growing industry, especially in the plastics sector where PET has become king and companies are finding it more cost-effective to produce packaging using plastic rather than aluminum or paper, for example. […]
So where are we today with the integration of copper alloys in mold building? There are still major opportunities and major contributions to be gained by companies that are willing to use these products. […]
Prior to 1987, there was very limited use of copper alloys as molding surfaces and molds using copper alloy materials were rare. It was believed by a majority at that time that copper alloys were just not strong enough, […]
During the last 20 years, copper alloy use as molding and wear surfaces in molds has been expanding although the industry has been slow in learning how to properly and fully integrate copper alloy products into their mold designs. […]
The type of fouling (chemical make-up and physical characteristics) or residue the molding process leaves behind on your tooling will help determine your cleaning requirements. Many resins contain stabilizers, […]
Moldmakers have been reluctant until now to use high conductivity copper alloys in their molds due to the perceived cost of copper-based alloys compared with conventional tool steels. […]
Injection molders and blow molders can benefit from high conductivity alloys by achieving faster cycle times and better part quality. There are certain properties of the mold material and polymer that enable these efficiencies to be realized. […]
Data translation between CAD and CAM software applications is very high on the list of problems for buyers. The standard format IGES and the popular VDA in Europe are often flavored by software developers to fit their database structures. […]