IMM's Plant Tour: A molder that's true to its name

Bill Kristensen Sr. is the founder and president of a premier custom molding/ contract manufacturer in New England called Hi-Tech Mold & Tool Inc. Called Bill Sr. around the shop, he donned a toolmaker's apron on Feb. 28 at the request of his sales and marketing manager, Carl Olson, who needed a favor.

Olson asked Bill Sr. to fix a tiny core pin that was bent and was causing ultrasonic welding problems downstream. All the other toolmakers were busy, or not available, and production was shut down.

Olson says, "Late in the day he comes in, sits in my office, and proceeds to tell me how he practically rebuilt the mold. He's got grease on his hands and a big smile on his face. Then he says he's going to the gym.

"Guess what?" he continues. "That tool started up beautifully the next morning. Bill spent a good part of the day with assembly operators, enthusiastic about how much productivity improved. My customer got his parts Monday morning, and he was a hero to his customer. That's how we grow."

Bill Sr. started out as a toolbuilder in the 1960s. Since adding custom molding to moldmaking and starting Hi-Tech in 1983, he and his company have built a reputation of being a reliable, responsive, full-service supplier that specializes in technically demanding applications—the tough stuff that often makes others stop before they get started.

How tough? Try this one: Hi-Tech presently molds, machines, and assembles a developmental product it helped design for a major aircraft component supplier. An aluminum-to-plastic conversion, it's the water separator for the USAF F-16 fighter bomber—a 11/2-lb shot of glass-filled Ultem PEI. That's just for starters. Let's tour.

Nice Neighbors
In 1998 Hi-Tech moved into a new 55,000-sq-ft facility in a new industrial park near Bousquet Mountain, home of one of the first ski resorts in the U.S. The industrial park is in Pittsfield, MA, home of yet another famous name, GE Plastics.

Hi-Tech ran the first commercial quantities of GEP's Ultem. And it wasn't just because Hi-Tech's original plant was right across the street from GEP's PPDC, either. GEP was delighted to find a local molder with a mind open to such technologically challenging projects, according to Olson.

He ought to know. Before coming to Hi-Tech about four years ago, Olson was an applications engineer at GEP's Advanced Polymers Group when Ultem was hatched.

Over time GEP would suggest Hi-Tech to customers interested in finding a molder willing to work on tough projects involving its specialty ETPs. This relationship continues today, even though Hi-Tech is no longer GEP's next-door neighbor. And GEP is by no means the only one to profit from a long-term relationship with Hi-Tech.


Engineering Support
In fact, Hi-Tech still works closely with its first customer, Otis Elevator, even after it moved much of its production south of the border about five years ago. Before then Hi-Tech had transferred one of its own engineers to Otis' HQ in Bloomington, IN to act as an engineering liaison. Hi-Tech now maintains a field office in Tucson, AZ to maintain direct contact. Hi-Tech also uses a warehouse in Nogales, Mexico.

Another field technical program manager, Chris Araujo, covers the eastern U.S. out of Pittsfield. He just came on board from another large, full-service injection molder in January and brought his expertise in insert molding and automotive programs with him. "Engineering support is essential in the type of programs we are involved in, and we put a lot of time and effort into them," Olson says.

Most Hi-Tech sources, like Dave Pellegrino, toolroom manager, attribute successes they achieve by teaming up with their customers to the teamwork they practice in-house. "There's not enough room on a business card to describe the number of things each of us does to make a project work," says Pellegrino. "I can't emphasize enough how much everybody here contributes to our success, from the machine operator to the president."


Partnering on Plant Design
Every department was involved in designing Hi-Tech's new plant. The head of each department formed a team of key employees to specify their department's needs. The layout strikes a good balance between compartmentalization and openness. It also reflects decades of hard-won experience in custom molding.

For example, the mold maintenance and storage area is adjacent to the main molding area, saving time and effort. A Motan materials handling system on the mezzanine can deliver any material to any press anywhere in the plant. And there is minimal forklift traffic. Hi-Tech uses overhead bridge cranes instead, and uses them in a practical manner.

Rather than let a single central crane dictate the design of the entire plant, the company took a different tack. One overhead 3-ton crane is in Hi-Tech's cleanroom, another is in the main molding area, and yet another is in the toolroom.

There are no subterranean trenches and drains. Machine utilities run on top of the poured concrete flooring under covers. Mold utility connections are mounted on standardized manifolds designed to easily set up every conceivable type of mold. This approach also makes molding machine capacity expansion and reconfiguration much easier.


Old Reliable
In addition to conventional molding—if you can call anything it molds "conventional"—Hi-Tech also does inmold decorating, insert molding, gas assist, overmolding, structural foam molding, and injection-compression molding. It presently has 24 presses. Sixteen of them, including three new all-electrics purchased in 2000, are Nissei machines.

Hi-Tech has been bullish on Nissei from day one. When he was evaluating his first machine purchases Nissei officials put a bug in Bill Sr.'s ear. "If you can prove you can put the same amount of material into a cavity every single time, you've got a good machine."

Bill Sr. found he could do so with a Nissei molding machine. Today, his computerized SPC system is based on shot weight. Hi-Tech also uses Taguchi DOE and DSC to further ensure the quality of both incoming materials and outgoing finished goods. Its Nissei machines have been put through their paces, but 19 years later one of Hi-Tech's original Nisseis is still running.

Plans call for replacing all the older presses, but Olson says these new machines may not be all-electrics. "We can run a mold in a 400-ton electric that formerly required a 500-ton hydraulic, but we evaluate new machine purchases on a case-by-case basis."


The Four-legged Stool
"Molding, tooling, engineering, and secondaries—these are the four legs of our stool," says Olson. "But we continually try to cultivate our expertise in every phase of the process, including materials."

Hi-Tech builds all types of molds, from simple to complex designs, prototypes to Class 1 tools, SPI Class 101 to 104, some with hot manifolds, and some that are multicavity. Historically, most of its work has been in H-13. Hi-Tech uses most of the tools it makes in-house, but has a loyal clientele for high-performance molds. In 1993, for example, Hi-Tech built a two-cavity, Class 101 lantern mold for a major battery company. Six years later the customer ordered a second mold to add capacity, and to replace a competitor's tool that ran a 35 percent longer cycle. The original mold is still running, 364 days of the year.

A two-man crew is exclusively dedicated to mold maintenance and minor repairs. All molds are cleaned and inspected after use. Hi-Tech regularly accepts transition tools from other molders, which keeps this crew busy.

When it comes to design and engineering, Hi-Tech supports its intensive project management efforts with MoldFlow, Pro/Engineer, and Unigraphics software. The company is as skilled in DFMA and parts consolidation as it is in 3-D modeling and materials selection.

In spite of all its impressive accomplishments, Hi-Tech still has an open mind for trying something new. For example, one biomedical company transferred a series of 40 parting line injection tools to Hi-Tech for molding in its Class 100,000 cleanroom. It decided to purchase a new parting line Arburg rather than modify the tools to fit a horizontal press. Olson tells us that customers have been guiding the company's transformation into lean thinkers. He says, "Customers frequently show us something new and ask us, 'Can it be done?' Our attitude usually is, 'We don't know, but we'll give it a shot.'"