Published 4/4/2017

SLIDESHOW: Technology Showcase – AMBA Plant Tours

On March 16th, two very different mold manufacturing companies opened their doors and hosted comprehensive tours of their facilities to members of the American Mold Builders Association (AMBA).

Cynthia Kustush

Contributing Writer

The night before the tour, the AMBA hosted a reception and BBQ dinner at the Boulevard Brewery, a great venue for networking and refreshment with friends.

Vector Tool and Engineering's Jake Chambers, sales engineer, introduced attendees to the company.

Numerous examples of Vector Tool and Engineering's molds were on display throughout the tour. Here are just a few examples.

CNC machines at Vector Tool are programmed on the shop floor by the machine operators.

Here is a great example of lean and 5S at work in Vector Tool's moldmaking area. See the large tools and air tools on outlined tool boards in the background. White plastic covers the work benches to protect mold surfaces and make moving heavy components easier.

Every employee at Vector Tool kept busy, yet had time for any questions.

Vector Tool & Engineering uses mill/turn capabilities to reduce handling and setups, even for parts that don't have round contours you'd expect on parts from a lathe. Making a part like this in one setup keeps things moving.

The tour didn't interrupt productivity at Vector Tool & Engineering.

Creative Blow Mold Tooling quality manager David Carter explains the quality process including CMM and photography of all cavities.

It was really interesting to see and learn about blow molding at Creative Blow Mold Tooling. Most AMBA members are plastic injection mold builders. This group was in the finishing and validation area.

Creative Blow Mold Tooling combines 24 machining centers including 5-axis verticals, 3- and 4-axis verticals, and horizontal machining centers, for the right machines for any job.

Creative Blow Mold Tooling's Director of Business Development Jim Hensiek demonstrates their digital scanner, used for both reverse engineering and validation.

Creative Blow Mold Tooling designed special fixturing for faster and easier setups on the 5-axis machines.

Creative Blow Mold Tooling's finishing and assembly area is neat and well-organized with good lighting.

An example of Creative Blow Mold Tooling's value-added services is this fixture, built from solid aluminum billet to ensure accurate alignment.

The inspection fixture on the CMM table for measurement.

Managers from each host company sit together during the roundtables to discuss what they saw and how to improve.

After the tours, roundtable discussions among attendees help summarize takeaways from each tour. The red and green note cards are used to provide kudos and opportunities for improvement that the attendees can take back to their own plants.

On March 16^th, two very different mold manufacturing companies opened their doors and hosted comprehensive tours of their facilities to members of the American Mold Builders Association (AMBA). The shops were Vector Tool and Engineering, a subsidiary of Peterson Manufacturing that builds injection molds and tooling for the plastics industry, and Creative Blow Mold Tooling, which specializes in building plastic blow molds and plastic bottle mold tooling.

The AMBA has organized plant tours for its member companies for several years now, and they are very popular for obvious reasons, such as being able to see how another shop is set up, the equipment it runs, how it manages each job, how it manages its people, and so on. I’d like to share highlights from these tours with MMT readers today as my Technology Showcase. The images you will see in this slideshow are all courtesy of Todd Schuett from Creative Technology.

To learn more about each of these companies and see more images from the tours, visit their websites (links are embedded with each company’s name, above). You can also see images from previous industry events with the AMBA and other organizations by visiting Creative Technology’s Facebook page here.