June 2009 Issue
June 2009
Features
Featured articles from the June 2009 issue of MoldMaking Technology
Rapid Prototypes + Moldmaking = Profits
Is there an easy way to avoid the pains of making mistakes in the mold building world? Absolutely! There are three simple steps that you can implement into your moldmaking process that will increase the moldmaking power of your shop and reduce your stress.
Read MoreAdapting Scouting Skills to Your Shop
A common factor among all of us in achieving our goals— whether personal or business—is our past associations.
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Optical Molds Give ABCO Big Advantage in Solar Lenses
Expertise in building tools for optical parts leads to a potentially large market for renewable energy.
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Operations Reassessment Yields Customer Diversification, Increased Competitiveness and Improved Capabilities
The recession came early to Michigan shops serving the automotive industry. For Eifel—a company specializing in simultaneous product development and manufacturing with a heavy emphasis on mold manufacturing—it resulted in the acceleration of a strategic plan for growth.
Read MoreSeven Habits of Highly Effective Mold Maintenance Supervisors
A review of what mold repair technicians believe a mold maintenance supervisor should bring to the table.
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Avoid Chasing CNC Variability with CAM
Moldmakers who produce tooling for medical devices and many other high precision molded products have been under increasingly greater pressure to reduce the variability of tooling components manufactured on their CNC equipment. One way they attempt to do this is by carefully adjusting offsets in the CAM program to compensate for variations in their equipment’s volumetric accuracy. Sometimes this works, other times not. Either way, the toolmaker pays a heavy penalty.
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Mold Storage Packets Store Supplies, Useful in Lean Manufacturing
Mold kitting packets from Canopies by Fred (Seattle, WA) are packets that are used to assist in implementing a lean production process.
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Greater Accuracy and Productivity Via Surface Finishing and Cleaning
Choosing the optimum type of flexible hone or brush can be highly effective in improving the accuracy of mold assembly or enhancing injection molding productivity.
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Recession Continues, but It Is Moderating
39.6 Total Mold Business Index for June 2009 The total Mold Business Index is a weighted average of the sub-indices for new orders, production, employees, backlog, exports and supplier deliveries.
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High-Speed Machining Simplified
How high-speed machining can be reliably achieved by using the principles applied along with the correct tooling, feeds and speeds.
Read MoreHow Success Happens
All too often lately, I sense a feeling of entitlement in some areas of manufacturing. I know how that sounds—U.S. manufacturers rightly believe that they’ve been bludgeoned over the past 20 years or so by government trade policies, along with a shifting perception in our culture that a career in manufacturing is in some way less-than-noble/lucrative/rewarding. But there are some SMMs that I speak with who say things are hopeless. They tell me that their industry and government have abandoned them, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
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Cost of Ownership: A Lifetime of Molding Savings
“There’s nothing more expensive than a cheap mold,” has been said by many a tooling engineer after a bargain of a mold began bleeding profits.
Read MoreMoldMaking Expo 2009: Get Organized
Surveys conducted by sister publication, Plastics Technology (www.ptonline.com) as well as MapYourShow (www.mapyourshow.com)—developed in 2005 by Gardner Publications, Inc. to provide state-of-the-art trade show mapping and planning solutions.
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