Molds & Tooling
The Eight Stages of Mold Repair
While the mold was still being disassembled, two “cleaners” began pulling tooling out of plates and putting them into buckets in preparation for a good scrubbing—and I mean a scrubbing.
Read MoreHow to Determine Maximum Mold Cycle Counts
At my first production meeting with my new employer, I was told, “We want you to establish a preventive maintenance program that is based on maximum cycle counts for all our molds.” Then, before I could launch into an explanation of how best to determine maximum cycle counts, I was hit with the follow-up: “So, how many cycles do you think our molds can safely run before we need to clean them?”Leaving my crystal ball at home and unable to get my x-ray vision working, there was no way to answer this question with any real accuracy.
Read More
Additive Manufacturing: New Capabilities for Rapid Prototypes And Production Parts
Many plastics processors are just starting to become familiar with the terms “additive manufacturing” or “additive fabrication,” which refer to a group of processes that build up parts by successively adding material, often in layers.
Read MoreWhy Not Just Let ’r Leak?
Here’s how a typical West Coast molding facility with 20 injection presses investigated the downtime impact of water leaks in the plant.
Read More
What Toolroom Maintenance Supervisors Need to Know-Part II
September’s “Mold Shop” column presented an overview of a mold maintenance supervisor’s need-to-know priorities.
Read More
Vacuum Venting Keeps Molds Running Longer
In tough economic times, facing hungry competition here and abroad, molders cannot afford to ignore preventable problems that slow cycles, cost machine downtime and mold maintenance, and waste material on reject parts.
Read More
Unbalanced? No Shortage of Ways to Fix Uneven Filling of Multi-Cavity Molds
The accepted ground rule for balancing melt flow in multi-cavity injection molds is to achieve equal flow distance from the injection point to each cavity.
Read More
Novel Ejector System Eliminates Plates and Pins
Injection mold cost savings, greater molding productivity, and better part quality are promised for a new ejection system that does away with conventional ejector plates, housings, pins, and risers. This approach is said to reduce mold height, shorten mold-open times by at least 10%, enable better optimization of mold cooling—not to mention eliminating ejector marks on parts.
Read More
Cleaning Molds in the Press Slashes Downtime
For a global electronics manufacturer with around-the-clock production, the ability to clean molds in the press without disassembly provided major productivity increases.
Read More
What Toolroom Maintenance Supervisors Need to Know
Those in charge of keeping molds reliable and production-ready normally start their day in the same manner—wondering what broke down since they last walked out the door—and hoping they have the resources to get it going again.
Read More
