“The beauty of the Volt’s design is much more than just surface deep. The interior and exterior design is an important element of the Volt’s overall mission to be the most energy-efficient Chevy ever.”  Bob Boniface, Director of Design, Chevrolet Volt

]]> http://detailtechgroup.com/detail-technologies-and-automotive-lighting-help-electrify-gms-chevy-volt/feed/ 0 http://detailtechgroup.com/if-you-don%e2%80%99t-know-where-you-are-%e2%80%a8going-any-road-will-get-you-there/ http://detailtechgroup.com/if-you-don%e2%80%99t-know-where-you-are-%e2%80%a8going-any-road-will-get-you-there/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:42:52 +0000 admin http://detailtechgroup.com/?p=528 By Michael K. Noggle from Injection Molding

What can you accomplish for your company if you decide to succeed?

I’m borrowing the headline from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland because it’s always a great question. What road are you on and where is it taking you? Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in [...]]]> By Michael K. Noggle from Injection Molding

What can you accomplish for your company if you decide to succeed?

I’m borrowing the headline from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland because it’s always a great question. What road are you on and where is it taking you? Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in Wonderland, or maybe Oz?

While growing a plastics molding/moldmaking company from less than $500,000 to more than $200 million, I managed to learn a few things along the way. The information that follows is useful for business owners but also for supervisors, managers, or spouses. You may have to sand the corners to get it to fit your particular situation, but that’s your challenge. It’s about strategic and tactical planning (sort of), but with a heaping helping of how to implement it. Success is all about execution.

I now consult for manufacturing companies around the world, mostly strategic planning, but a fair amount of process improvement work as well. I wrote this on a plane returning from China. Mostly I work with injection molding companies or end users of plastic products, but I have worked with battery makers and even a commercial window manufacturer for large buildings.

Manufacturing is manufacturing. It continues to amaze me how nearly 15 years after my retirement, there are so many companies well behind where we were when I left. Small wonder so many are struggling. Some suffer from lack of planning. Others plan their tails off but can’t execute a lick. Some would say planning is the easy part and, largely, they would be correct. However, our military, which is best-in-class, knows that even a poor plan well executed is better than a great plan poorly executed. Still, you need a plan!

First step, “The Vision.” Yeah, I know—the old Vision thing again. No, really. Where do you see your company/department/self in one or maybe three years? My “aha” moment was when someone asked me if our company was a small company that would always be a small company or a large company that had not (yet) grown up. Wow! I could actually see the light bulb turn on as my mind kicked into high gear.

We had this acorn of a business that really could become a sturdy oak tree if we cared for it properly. With that question in your mind, I ask again, where do you see yourself/your company in the years to come? A corollary to the title of this piece would be, “If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?” If you are doing the same things over and over, maybe you are already there. If that’s good by you, read no further.

Leadership and 
differentiation
If you do the same things day in and day out, you must accept the same results forever—unless something moves you to reach for a new and specific goal. Two points to make here. First, if you feel like you are coasting along, I have some news: You can only coast in one direction. (Think about it.) Second, if you do not have a vision of a better place, there will never be a better place for you. Without a vision, any road really will do, especially the one you are on. If you want to change, I am about to reveal my biggest secret about how to make that happen. You’ll have to wait just a bit.

So what’s your vision? Dream big! It can, and probably should, be a stretch. It does need to be something tangible, measurable, and achievable. Walk along with me and I’ll tell you about how we grew our company, SPM. When our sales were around $25 million per year, we set a goal of $100 million in five years. Here was a company that had grown organically for 20-plus years to reach $25 million and we planned on quadrupling that in five years. Well, we exceeded $150 million in less than four years. How did that happen? Hang on for the secret.

We took several days with our key executives every year on a planning retreat. Using the future vision as a target, we established four primary goals each year and each goal had a myriad of associated objectives and tasks. Each task had a champion (if you don’t have a champion for each task, they will linger forever). Trust me, these were not golf holidays; we worked from morning to evening.

Our first goal was, “Differentiate the group from our competitors and provide turnkey manufacturing solutions to our customers by excelling in service, technology, quality, time-to-market, scope of services, and value.” Now, that’s both a mouthful and a lot to bite off. Anyone who knew us in the early to mid-‘90s knows we made this goal a reality. We were tough to compete with. We worked hard to differentiate ourselves.

How? We were among the first in California to install and become proficient in CAD/CAM. Back then a CAD system cost our little company more than $300,000. It was no easy decision. The payoff? Our first seven-figure contract came shortly (surprisingly shortly) after investing in this technology. The customer wanted to work with vendors capable of exchanging all data electronically. It was between us and . . . well, I guess it was just us in our region. Several similar contracts followed within the first six months. We were also among the first to automate our molding machines and reduce setup time to less than 30 minutes, last part to first part.

Our second goal was somewhat related: “Be a leader in the industry with above-average margins and return on assets.” As part of our “be a leader in the industry” goal, we helped create guidelines for tooling and cosmetic specifications that were adopted by the SPI (Society of the Plastics Industry). We put our money where our mouth was. None of our goals was related to size. We never really wanted to be the biggest; we wanted to be the best and just trusted that growth would be the natural result of being the best.

Maintaining solid margins was important to the health of our company. We really understood our cost structure and how low we could go if needed. We walked away from business that was just too cheap. If we found out we were bidding against 10 other companies, we pulled out. Who wants to be the lowest of 10 bidders? If you get the job, you either have some supercompetitive advantage or you made a mistake.

Throw out top-down thinking
It’s now time to reveal the biggest secret I ever shared about how to accomplish those difficult tasks that stand between you and your vision. Keep this to yourself and you’ll have a huge advantage over your competitors (especially those who don’t read IMM). Here it is: S-DRAW + KCAB + KNIGHT without the G. All together it’s SDRAWKCABKNIHT. Focus on this a bit. Tick-tock, tick-tock . . . got it yet? Right! Think backwards! Really, this is huge, and here’s how it works.

Part of our first goal was to excel in many areas. Realistically, we had to step up and be an initiator. Not too many molding companies had ever gone through ISO, as an example, when we started the process. There was no one to learn from. Nor did we really know how valuable ISO would be for our company. But we could see far enough ahead to know our customers would require this within a few years. Better to get there ahead of the competition.

Very few molders had full-blown MRP systems in place then and no one in the world, except us, had their own Windows-based, real-time manufacturing/quality system. We had Win-Control, which was far superior to anything on the market, including Mattec and other real-time systems. We could see which machines were running and exactly how much material was in the hopper. We could track molding cycles and see quality control information at a glance. All of these things happened thanks to SDRAWKCABKNIHT.

How did we make ISO happen in a fairly orderly fashion using this important tool? The smaller your company is when you take on a task like ISO, the easier it is. Unfortunately for us, by the time we decided to implement ISO, we had several hundred employees and multiple locations. We were well entrenched in our ways, but committed to getting better. That meant no more coasting. What “think backwards” is all about is setting an inviolable delivery date for your task. We set nine months to accomplish being ready for registration. It took every minute of it!

How did we set the date? Not arbitrarily, that’s for sure. We brought in consultants to explain what needed to be done and shared this with all our functional managers (department heads, for those of you who might think we left out the dysfunctional managers). We got everyone’s buy-in to nine months. We pounded our stake in the ground, and then we worked backwards from that stake to where we were. In between, we wedged in each thing we needed to do in order to be finished on time.

There were just about a bazillion things we needed to do. We established critical path tasks and intermediate completion dates. I’m sure you know the answer to the old question, “How do you eat an elephant?” (One bite at a time.) Our director of quality broke everything into small, bite-sized tasks so we could chew them up one by one. Every manager promised to do his/her part. Gosh, what could possibly go wrong? You might have also figured out that it helps if a lot of people try to consume an elephant. Get everyone involved! Yet, we almost choked on the first bite.

Our first task was for each manager to write his/her processes and procedures. Each department was to accomplish this within the first month. We met weekly at the beginning to track progress. Except for the quality department, there wasn’t any progress. But champions adapt, and so we did. We had failed to account for the OBE factor. All too often we fail to execute a plan because we are Overcome By Events considered more important—like your regular job.

Our managers already were under a pretty heavy load with constant interruptions and we forgot to take that into account. We were down one month and at our first gate, but it was closed and locked. This was really a critical time for our company. If we let this slide, it would set the precedent for all future programs. Failure was not an option. I sought ideas from inside and outside our business until associates said, “Why don’t you have a junior engineer do the technical writing?” Why didn’t I think of that? In fact, we hired two junior engineers to get back on track and get the job done faster.

As a manager growing your department or an owner growing your business, there are times you need to make the ground rules abundantly clear. You must drive the plan as champion of your tasks. These junior engineers were proficient in technical writing but knew nothing about our business. They could not begin to write processes and procedures without input from the managers of each of our departments.

Here’s what I said at the meeting in which I introduced the junior engineers: “I would like to introduce Mr. X and Mr. Y. They are here to assist you by writing your processes and procedures. When they come to your department, you, or someone in your department, will walk them through each and every process and procedure. Should you be too busy to work with them when they knock on your door, they will go to another department and never return. You will then do your own writing and it will be done at the same time as all of the other departments. We will be finished by our agreed-upon date.”

Guess what? Not one manager was too busy to work with these young men. The completion of this book was a major stepping stone for the future of our business. It allowed us to really review what we were doing, and we made a lot of improvements because we took time to examine ourselves. We also were able to use this information when opening new plants or acquiring existing businesses. As we grew, we looked at this as the “McDonald’s approach.” Whenever a customer visited an SPM facility, he/she would find the same set of processes and procedures in place. If we found a better way, we upgraded across the board. Remember, you will never improve what you don’t measure.

Get your employees to value the company . . .
Your business gains on the shoulders of the people at the bottom of your organization chart. Think about this: Who is the last person to see your product before the customer? How are you treating them? We turned our org chart upside-down to show our employees how important they are. We made sure they realized the packing slip with their name on it would be opened by the customer. Getting all of our employees to understand that they were important and appreciated helped us with our third goal, “Achieve an average XX% internal [organic] growth rate on a relatively consistent basis and supplement that growth with strategic acquisitions and joint ventures. Our growth rate in 20XX will be XX%.”

You will not achieve these kinds of goals unless everyone is on board. You need complete buy-in. Our employees shared in our profits and our doors were always open to listen to any issue they might have, business or personal. In the end, this helped improve our quality levels to among the highest in the industry. We received the highest vendor rating among several of our Fortune 500 clients. I remember getting a 98 rating from Sony out of a possible 100. The two points missed related to three out of five possible points for our pricing. We were competitive but not the lowest priced (that would have rated a five out of five for 100%). From my perspective, I saw this 98 as a perfect score.

Time and again, we closed jobs without being the lowest bid because our customers knew we would deliver quality parts on time. In fact, our policy, written everywhere around our factories, was, “We will deliver defect-free, competitive products and services on time to our customers.” We would occasionally quiz an employee on the shop floor. If he could recite the company policy without looking, he received a small cash bonus, on the spot. By not having to sell on price alone, we were able to meet our third goal. To get a little more, you have to be seen as offering a little more. What are you doing that is better than your competitors?

On a related point, one of our annual review questions was, “What have you done in the last year to make yourself more valuable to our company?” Do your employees have 10 years of experience or one year repeated 10 times? There is a difference, and it applies to you as well. What have you done in the last year that might benefit the company (or your other relationships, for that matter)? Reading related books, taking classes, belonging to industry groups, teaching, and so forth—these all help, especially if the new knowledge is applied appropriately. Those looking for above-average raises were required to show us a reason. Many of our employees did. By the way, we lead best by our example. I took classes along with other managers as well as attended summer business courses at Stanford. We should not ask of others what we are unwilling to do ourselves.

. . . by valuing your employees
Our fourth goal is no less important than our first: “Provide a safe and rewarding work environment for our employees and be a good corporate citizen of the communities in which we operate.” No one will ever hear what we say if our actions speak in a contradictory fashion. One could argue that if you really value your employees, this should not have to be stated. But we stated it specifically because we wanted to challenge ourselves to measure and improve this important area.

We promoted safety through cash payments for consecutive months with no lost-time injuries. Restrooms and lunchrooms were as clean as most good hotels. We provided ESL (English as a second language) courses at our facilities. We shared manufacturing data with our employees—for instance, on-time delivery performance, reject rate from customer, reject rate in-house, manufacturing efficiency, manufacturing utilization, and so on. We taught several other classes at our facilities (for our employees), including basic SPC techniques. Our company actually started the apprenticeship program for plastics moldmakers in the state of California.

We shared our Thanksgiving potluck meal as a family. I remember when I was an apprentice moldmaker and the company was struggling to make ends meet, my dad, then owner/CEO/president/top dog, personally passed out a large canned ham to each employee as we shut down at noon on Christmas Eve. He shook each employee’s hand and offered his thanks for their efforts. What a valuable lesson to learn. Like it or not, through thick and thin, we are all in this together!

By Marcelo Nicosia from Moldmaking Technology

By involving the tool designer, builder and molder early in product development, you can reduce turnaround time by weeks or even months, shave weeks off the mold construction cycle and reduce costs by eliminating potential product design troubles.

Teamwork

Product and [...]]]> The Key to Up-Front Mold Design

By Marcelo Nicosia from Moldmaking Technology

By involving the tool designer, builder and molder early in product development, you can reduce turnaround time by weeks or even months, shave weeks off the mold construction cycle and reduce costs by eliminating potential product design troubles.

Teamwork

Product and mold designers can work through most of the manufacturing issues in advance by teaming up in the early stages of product development as one engineered process. A team of engineers with diverse backgrounds concurrently working together is far more capable, intelligent and talented than any individual will ever be.

Part design shouldn’t be a millstone of the product designer, but the shared production of the entire team that has contributed to its achievement. Being powered by a creative product development team streamlined with robust manufacturing engineering muscle is a tremendous competitive advantage nobody can afford to overlook.

Communication

Open communication between the design parties is crucial to keeping the tool design and build on schedule. Increasing emphasis on concurrent part and tool design makes the associability with the part model data more significant than ever for faster reaction in the event of design changes.

In the result of a drastic modification to the part, the mold designer should be informed immediately so he can evaluate the revision of the tool build. Communication, interaction, participation and involvement are widespread key words in today’s mold manufacturing environment.

Cost

There also is a cost/time matter to consider (see Figure 3). In the event of an engineering change to a particular product due to poor quality, cost or performance, you’d rather find out sooner than later. The cost to repair a potential problem is multiplied by several times the further it is discovered down the product development cycle. A problem discovered while designing the part or mold is far more economical to repair than if the glitch is revealed after the molds are built, the parts are molded, and the products are assembled, packaged and sitting on the store’s shelf. A $500 part design change can proliferate to be a $50,000 change—if it needs to be addressed after parts are put on the market.

Overlapped Engineering Tasks

Although high-tech solutions—such as high-speed machining and automation—can accelerate certain portions of the mold build process, there is a great opportunity to overlap product and mold design for timesavings (see Figure 4). In order to manage this concurrent activity you must select your mold designer first while designing the product. The mold designer not only will help in anticipating potential molding problems, he also can accelerate your process by starting the preliminary mold design while the part design is being completed—running them parallel. Furthermore, by using the same 3-D design software for product and tool design, rapid engineering response is guaranteed due to the data legacy and associability of the software. Having a product and tool designer using the same CAD system is strongly recommended.

Advantages

The main advantage of having your tool designer involved earlier is the ability to influence the product and processes being developed. This approach results in added value to your services and creates strong ties with your customer as he becomes more reliant on you to oversee his design process. You can integrate with your customer by catering strong manufacturing skills, value-added services and the ability to anticipate his manufacturing needs.

Another great advantage of this concurrency is cross training. As the tool designer learns and understands the use and function of the product developed, the part designer gains the knowledge of tooling concerns and how to correct them. This knowledge gain also is useful for future projects.

One last gain is that the mold designer can anticipate potential changes and possible future modifications to the part. When he designs the mold with this in mind, he can keep the tool compatible and avoid expensive repairs in the future. Staying clear from certain areas with components or cooling lines, anticipating future mold inserts, implementing steel safe conditions, or merely protecting certain parts of the mold that might get revised is a tremendous time and cost saving not only at tool build, but also for future modifications.

Overlapped integration.

Figure 4—Overlapped integration.

A disadvantage of no communication between designers is a good share of lost time. If the product designer doesn’t communicate the part changes quickly enough, the mold designer will waste valuable time designing a tool with an outdated part.

Another drawback is in the event of extreme part changes in shape and form with dramatic changes in the parting line. A large amount of mold design work can be trashed if the part undergoes extraordinary modifications. Closer communication and compromise between product designer and mold designer is the answer to time-to-market improvements.

A Break for Mold Designers

Mold design is a highly demanding profession and a vital function of product development success. The mold engineering practice cannot be expected to be any faster without giving up something. No matter what kind of software or computer you may use, you just can’t think faster. This doesn’t mean that mold designers should have an unlimited amount of time to perform the job, but at least enough to have an opportunity to study and analyze the part to be molded. The more they know about the part functions and design intent, the more they can spot potential problems down the road. The sooner a mold designer gets involved, the more time that is still on hand to concentrate on potential glitches, and reduce the chances of becoming a victim of designs that are not molder friendly.

Up-front mold design allows the engineering team to explore all feasible alternatives early in the process and reduce costly changes later. It prevents the tool builder from wasting a lot of effort having to rework tooling and avoid producing an unacceptable or expensive part. The way to design molds today is not just taking the final product design data sent from the customer, construct parting line surfaces and enclose them with a mold base. You should discuss any improvements or potential issues with the customer. Communicating slight changes in the part design will lead to considerable time and cost savings.

If you want to shrink leadtimes, reduce manufacturing costs and create a competitive edge, get a competent mold designer by your side before the product design gets developed. You can have a high rate of return for a relatively small time investment. With an open mind, forward-preventive thinking and a unified vision you too can save time, money and design for manufacture.

Reduce Leadtimes with Concurrent Product/Mold Engineering

It’s been proven that leadtimes can be reduced by an average of 25 to 35 percent with concurrent product/mold engineering. From initial marketing suggestions to final product delivered, there were considerable time and cost reductions. A 10-month project delivery can be cut down to six months just by supervising the progression of actions throughout the entire development process.

Recently, an undisclosed OEM that manufactures fire detection systems had contracted help with the development of its upcoming series of commercial smoke detectors to hit the market. The project consisted of several different parts (a total of 15) to be made for different assembly versions and of diverse materials that were going to be used indoors as well as outdoors. The product design team was very knowledgeable as well as open and eager for new suggestions.

After brainstorming the initial concepts, conferencing and cooperating, the original number of parts needed was condensed; the number of molds to be built was reduced by combining them with interchangeable inserts in the tool; and, many features of the parts were simplified that would have caused unnecessary lifters, floating plates and side actions. The team figured out how to over-mold the gasket element inside the housings by using one of the tools to be built and gear it for co-injection.

This interaction not only saved a tremendous amount of time by dropping the number of parts, it also reduced the tooling cost radically because the molds were fewer and much less sophisticated.

Parts were designed; molds were concurrently designed and built; plastic parts were approved after minimal adjustments to the tool due to steel safe provisions made on critical areas; and, molding production was achieved in a six-month period. The tooling budget was reduced 25 percent from initial forecast, and the target piece part cost was condensed by 15 percent due to enhanced cooling and easier “processability” of the mold. The OEM declared that the turnout was historically successful.

Achieve Fast Turnaround, Stay under Budget, Meet Time Constraints

A successful toy manufacturer had to bring to the market a new version of a big wheel tricycle already in production.

Redesigning the new tricycle parts and molds had a few challenges, including:

• The only information they had was a wooden prototype with the new outside conceptual shape desired.

• Five of the parts had to be injection molded and three parts had to be blow molded.

• Existing tooling had to be used because of tooling budget constraints.

• The new product had two versions—a large and a small one.

• The new product had to be at the stores before the Christmas season (It was mid-July).

After gathering the outside contour information by outsourcing the scanning of the prototype, work began. Many undercuts in the scanned data had to be removed, and all of the structural features had to be engineered using the existing version as a standard for reverse engineering. It also had to be ensured that the existing molds could be inserted without major rework due to time and cost. After a few part preliminary design reviews, mold design started. The manufacturer made rapid prototypes of all the parts that were designed, and confirmed the models after a few minor modifications. Mold steel was ordered at this time. Part design was completed almost at the same time that the mold design was finalized—all in the same office. The manufacturer had the mold all squared up and ready for final data to finish machining the details. The project hit the stores by November with all of the parts approved. The most gratifying aspect of this project was that in addition to the fast turnaround, the project was under budget, met time constraints, and its production stayed in the U.S.

Throughout the last 10 years, the rate of change has increased [...]]]> There has been a tremendous amount of change in the U.S. moldmaking industry over the past 10 years, and mold shops that adopt new machine tools, services and technology will enhance their capabilities for long-term success. – - By William Howard from Moldmaking Technology

Throughout the last 10 years, the rate of change has increased and technology has led to new possibilities in mold design and production. The most significant industry changes have been in regard to production techniques, manufacturing speeds, mold size and mold complexity.

Large, complex molds and micro molds have replaced small, simple-cavity molds. Greater emphasis is being placed on production leadtimes, speed, and agility. U.S. shops are turning to advanced machine tools and cutting edge manufacturing approaches to help reduce costs and meet the demanding just-in-time production schedules.

It comes as a shock to no one that the driving factor of change in the moldmaking industry has been the rise of off-shoring and its associated effect on pricing. U.S. moldmakers are increasingly feeling the pressure of foreign competition.

While U.S. moldmakers have lost a portion of less complex, lower technology, commodity work to overseas competitors, it’s not all gloom and doom. This void in commodity manufacturing has been filled with value-added products and services, which foreign markets struggle to provide. Moldmakers are finding success by taking advantage of unique or emerging industries such as medical, micro, large molds and high-value tooling.

Several niche markets have emerged. One of the most profitable is the medical market, which demands complexity, speed, and intricate mold designs on a daily basis.

As the industry changes, so too must machine tools and the associated manufacturing techniques. After all, what good is a hefty micromachining contract if you don’t have the appropriate tools to complete the job? “Faster” and “more complex” are terms that are thrown around a lot these days—in the same sentence as “tighter tolerances”, “finer surface finish”, “better blends and matches” and “less hand working.” Just as moldmakers change to meet the needs of their customers, suppliers have to change to meet the needs of their customers. That means innovative technology and even more innovative applications engineers.

Collapsed Leadtimes, Better Results
Ten years ago, it would not have been uncommon for the leadtime to manufacture a mold to be in the 12 to 16 week range—three to four months. However, over the past decade significant technological advancements in both machine tools technologies and manufacturing techniques have drastically reduced production times. Today, the leadtime to manufacture the same mold would be two to four weeks—often less than one month. Trial parts can be quickly molded using rapid prototype cavities created in a day or two. Now, time-to-market concerns often require production in weeks or even days, something that would have been thought unrealistic only a few years ago.

In addition to demanding faster cycle times and shorter leadtimes, customers expect tighter tolerances and higher quality surface finishes. Typically, doing a job faster produces a lower-quality product. Unfortunately, in this industry, quality defines who a moldmaker is. If quality suffers, business suffers.

Machine Tool Technology
As a result, moldmakers are turning to the machine tool builder for products that deliver higher productivity, greater precision, better surface finishes, and eliminate additional time-consuming hand finishing work. To meet this need, machine tool builders have dramatically increased machine axis velocities and accelerations, greatly expanded spindle rpm, while tightening positioning accuracy, repeatability and geometric tolerances. Control enhancements also have facilitated high-speed machining of complex, three-dimensional mold shapes to tighter tolerances.

A decade ago, 10,000 rpm was considered a fast spindle and 10 ipm federates were acceptable. Today, machines routinely incorporate 20,000, 30,000 and even 40,000 rpm spindles, and feedrates of 200, 300 and 400 ipm are commonplace. Combining these advanced machine tools with new manufacturing techniques—such as high-speed milling routines and tooling, hard-milling to eliminate multiple steps of machining, and high performance machining utilizing programming tricks and machine capabilities have provided the moldmaker with the necessary tools to compete and win.

In the past, it was virtually impossible to get a finished mold directly from a machine tool. A moldmaker would first machine the mold in the steel’s soft state, cutting a mold cavity that was fairly rough. After heat treating, the mold would be finish machined to as close to the final tolerances as possible. Ten years ago, the typical tolerance that might be achieved was +/- 0.002 inches. After hours of cleaning up the core and cavity by hand, the mold components would be ready for initial assembly. The two mold halves would be fit together and additional hand working would be required to actually create the proper fit and clearances between the working parts of the mold. Only after this labor intensive and time-consuming process was it actually ready for a test shot. Once again, after the initial parts were molded—typically, there would be additional hand-polishing required to meet part finish requirements and some additional fitting work to insure proper match-lines, seams and no flash on the finished part. Not to mention the fact that the mold would often have to be machined twice—once for the initial geometries and a second time after heat-treating to harden the mold.

Machining in the Hardened State
Perhaps the biggest step forward to reduce the time of recent years is the ability to cut the mold in the hardened state, often eliminating the two rounds of machining required and the wait-time for heat treating. A decade ago, it was understood that hardened steels were typically to be finish machined, and more often than not, hand finished. Today’s machines are capable of machining materials in the 60+ Rockwell range, and have even successfully machined carbide at 80+ HRc.

Given this ability, machining in the hardened state is not only possible, but preferable, because it frequently eliminates the time consuming EDM process. However, there is still a place for EDM. This is especially true for difficult-to-machine areas, such as deep ribs, tough radii, and very tight-tolerance features.

Burning on a Ram EDM is very accurate, but it also is very slow, particularly on a complex or large mold. Having the ability to mill in the hardened state without the use of Ram EDM saves overall mold production time and aids in the timely delivery of the mold, thanks to the simplified process and cutting directly to zero on the milling machine. A hardened block goes into one machine and a finished mold comes out.

By using advanced machine tools, moldmakers can eliminate additional, labor intensive, time-consuming, expensive steps and cut mold components to zero with accuracies to +/- 0.0005 inches or less in materials of 60 HRC and harder. Using machine tools that allow them to reach these tolerances and mill in the hardened state eliminates additional hand finishing and fitting, provides outstanding surface finishes, helps shops shorten leadtimes and reduce costs dramatically, giving them a definite advantage relative to overseas competition.

Many customers report that the primary reason they’re still successful, even after losing simple work to lower-cost providers, is due to their ability to turn out high quality molds quickly. They credit their teams of innovative engineers, new processing techniques and tooling, along with the ever-advancing machine tool, which allows them to produce molds faster and without the need for re-work, as is all-too common when work is sent overseas.

Areas of Growth Potential
Re-Working Overseas Molds
Perhaps one of the more interesting markets we’ve seen in moldmaking in recent years is applying North American quality to overseas molds. In other words, shops are finding that making poorly made molds work properly, even having to re-machine features or whole molds, is an area of growth potential.

Even the simplest molds have to fit together properly and the resulting parts must meet specific finish and tolerance requirements. When a mold is produced thousands of miles away from where it’s used, the mistakes of the molder often can’t be corrected efficiently without bringing in a local craftsman with high-performance machining abilities.

Often, these orphaned and defective molds have already been heat treated, so those willing to take on this work have to fix the mistakes in hardened steel. They need hardmilling skills and a machine capable of cutting hardened tool steel, as mentioned earlier.

Re-working defective overseas molds is a new and growing sector of moldmaking with great potential for those willing to fix the mistakes of others and invest in machinery capable of high-accuracy hardmilling.

Demand for Micro
Advanced manufacturing technologies have made micro components and devices commercially viable for the aerospace, automotive, electronics and biomedical industries. Mass replication of these devices requires micro molding, forming and stamping technology on an economical scale.

Micromachining certainly has its share of challenges. Cutting forces and tool pressures on cutting tools as small as 0.05 mm in diameter are significantly different than those on larger applications. Machine tools designed for micro must be able to recognize and achieve submicron movement commands. Machine tool stiffness and rigidity also are extremely important here, as even the slightest distortion or deflection will destroy the dimensional integrity of such miniature parts. Unchecked temperature change can quickly overshadow micro component tolerances. In addition, do not underestimate the challenges of measuring parts and part features in the micron range.

Some shops are producing flat parts in materials such as 420 stainless steel that require tolerances of 0.0002 inches, with absolutely no variance, over as much as a 6-inch distance.

Micromachining requires tremendous technology advances in tool construction and design, and usually calls for careful programming and very small tools that are hard to handle. But with the demand for miniaturization at an all-time high, those shops that have adopted the proper technology are quickly realizing the benefits.

Large Mold Manufacturing Requires Specialized Tools
Big molds require a substantial investment, which includes massive tooling that’s hard to move, heavy-duty machinery and other equipment to make the process as efficient as possible.

Modern high-performance machining is widely accepted to be a cost-effective solution for the production of small mold cavities with complex geometric surfaces. But the same demand for detail is often overlooked in selecting machinery for the production of larger molds. When dealing with large mold production more is invested in material costs and time, which increases the risk associated with scrap and re-work, placing greater emphasis on the quality of machinery used to manufacture these large tools.

It’s a significant challenge for moldmakers to get these operations set up to the point where they can be run efficiently. As a result, large moldmakers are using high-end CAD/CAM systems that are capable of generating effective toolpaths. This technology, coupled with machine tools that can remove materials at faster rates unattended will greatly help large moldmakers reduce production times.

Molds Are Growing in Complexity
In addition to size, mold complexity is becoming a significant issue in the moldmaking industry. Today, more emphasis is being put on ultra-precision, multi-cavity injection molds, specifically for customers in the medical, packaging and technology markets.

Some complex molds can have more than 1,500 parts and require extreme levels of accuracy and precision. As U.S. moldmakers take on more complex work, they are spending more time planning their molds and turning to reliable machine tools with excellent cut times and accuracy that eliminates the need for hand-work so they can turn out more molds more quickly.

Surface finish requirements can become a major issue, as some complex molds don’t allow hand-polishing in areas where a human hand can’t fit. The machine has the job of finishing the part, and has to perform this task flawlessly to allow the mold to work properly.

Moldmakers are relying more on advanced machines with fast control capabilities to speed up production on complex molds. They are looking to integrate total performance packages to process long, complex mold programs, at extremely fast speeds, while achieving levels of accuracy and finish previously unattainable.

Diversification
A new, emerging trend is for mold shop owners to take a hard look at their core competencies in order to discover where those abilities can be applied in other markets. While not giving up on moldmaking, these innovative shops are applying their machining and manufacturing expertise to satisfy the demands of aerospace, medical, energy and telecommunications customers.

These shops are finding that excess capacity can be quickly put to work in highly profitable production areas, as well as traditional moldmaking, allowing them to bid on a whole variety of new work.

This strategy of diversification can be an effective means of increasing business by utilizing the skills and equipment already in place to satisfy new customers.

After all, the production business currently booming in North America is that of the highest precision in tough materials, which is exactly the type of work moldmakers are used to. Not limiting your shop to molds can go a long way to better the bottom line.

Change Is a Constant
There has been a tremendous amount of change in the U.S. moldmaking industry over the last 10 years. While theses changes can be attributed to increased competition from foreign markets and a myriad of technological advances, the results are easily seen in process improvements, increased quality and capabilities, and faster production speeds, which allow U.S. moldmakers to compete like never before.

More and more U.S. moldmakers will continue to adopt new machine tools, services and technology that help them to enhance their capabilities by manufacturing complex, large and micro molds. In doing so, they further differentiate themselves from competitors, both foreign and domestic, and that has always been the name of the game.

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