Molds, Dies & Tooling

When Tim Peterson of Industrial Molds invited the district's Congressional Representative to visit the Rockford, IL company, he didn't expect Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL16) to actually come. But in early February he did, and Peterson is even more convinced than before that this is the right thing to do. Washington, says Peterson, appears to be getting the idea that these jobs are important.

PlasticsToday's Clare Goldsberry has written books for molders and moldmakers that include business and marketing strategies. Based on her long experience, she's come up with five key points to running a successful mold manufacturing operation.

Even considering all the many conditions that impact the life of your mold, the main enemy may be wear caused by differences in mold temperature and/or general mold alignment, and temperature differentials could be a conspirator in this plot.—Karl Szanto and Jerry Seidelman, Tech Mold Inc.

Quoting continues to be a huge issue among moldmakers. I periodically get calls from companies wanting to know if there are any good mold-quoting software packages out there. (Yes, there are several, but I've never talked to a moldmaker yet who really liked them.) Some create their own software, thinking they can integrate everything that's needed to come up with a good number really quickly.

Though many have found good tooling suppliers, there continue to be problems with sourcing molds in China, and even those who are experienced aren't immune. Here are things you should know if you have to get a mold made in China.

According to a blogger in a LinkedIn group, the biggest issues in sourcing molds in China are tool design and quality. "If you spec'd H-13, did you get H-13?" he queries fellow bloggers. "How many hands in the press, actual cycles, did it take to produce first-offs?"

You’re getting shut out because your bids are too high. Arm yourself with data on the total cost of a mold in your next bid and save your potential customer from making a bad decision.

Even though manufacturing activity at U.S. firms slowed up a bit compared with January, the latest data from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM; Tempe, AZ) showed February was the seventh successive positive month. The hope is that the activity will filter into other sectors; the fear is that current activity may be largely due to replacement of depleted inventories.

Did the recession slow the pace of progress at your company? Likely it did, 
but that does not mean you still aren’t striving to improve. In this, first in a 
four-part series, MPW will be tracking one company’s efforts to be sustainable 
and profitable.

Officials at Xten Industries, a custom injection molder and contract manufacturer in Kenosha, WI, believe that sustainability and profitability are not competing goals. They also are out to prove that profitable manufacturing and “Made in the U.S.A.” are not mutually exclusive terms.

As Chinaplas opens in Shanghai this April, China will more than likely be celebrating its impending emergence as the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, expecting to have edged slightly ahead of Japan when the final 2009 GDP numbers come in.

Italy's plastics processing machinery manufacturers expect an upturn in the first half of 2010, and it's one they could certainly use after last year's slide. In figures provided by Assocomoplast, the trade group representing about 160 of the country's leading suppliers of processing machinery and molds, total production fell last year by about 25% compared to 2008, with the drop in sales also hitting about 25% for both the export and domestic markets.