Engineer Your Way to a Better Mold

Amerimold Expo 2015 is the place to be if you're looking to learn about technologies and best practices that mold buyers and mold builders use to make critical decisions that improve processes, solve problems and meet quoted leadtimes. Check out our Engineer block of technical conference sessions.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Mold Steel - Does It Make a Difference?: Does the choice of mold steel play an important role or will any steel do the job? What determines the quality of steel as it applies to moldmaking? What differences are there in the grades of steel used for plastic injection molds? These and other questions will be addressed in this presentation. Ellwood Specialty Steel, Richard Polenick

Trying to Solve Molding Problems? Think in Plastic, Not Steel: This presentation will challenge you to consider modernizing your current approach to mold manufacturing by gaining a greater understanding of the plastic injection molding process. The path a plastic pellet takes as it is transformed from a pellet to a part will be reviewed. A shop case study reviewing successful applications of a variety of the strategies and solutions discussed will also be presented. Stone Plastics, Rich Oles; Mold Masters, Adam Domoraunt

Scientific Runner Design: Why is it that your more than $100,000 multi-cavity mold cannot make the same parts in each of the cavities? Why are you using naturally balanced runners if they are not providing a balance? Why do you use runners with graduated diameters? How do you size your runners?  This presentation will show how these questions are related and how many runner design practices, engineering methods and tools are the source of the biggest problems and roadblocks to increased productivity. Beaumont Technologies, John Beaumont

An Easy Mold Cooling Design Approach: Attend this session to learn how your mold cooling design can be made easy.  You will witness quick creation of complex water circuits, speedy placement of cooling components using a rich set of catalogs, fast installation of baffles at various depths, methods for analyzing the circuit (for correct water path), cooling analysis results and real-life examples of shops benefiting from this mold cooling design approach. Cimatron, John Barnes

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Aluminum Mold Alloys:  What’s the Right Choice?: Dimensional stability is a key part of moldmaking, and a partnership project with Sable Engineering demonstrated that aluminum alloys can and do behave differently during the machining process. This presentation will share project details and results including beginning block size, rough machining for squaring up, CNC machine tool type and the resulting movement that was observed in the blocks. Clinton Aluminum, Matt Kaye

Multiplying Your Options with Additive Manufacturing: Today’s additive machines are capable of printing various materials to accuracies that seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. In an effort to continually evolve moldmaking, mold builders are beginning to explore the benefits of additive moldmaking. While not a solution for every mold, additive manufacturing, when implemented correctly can provide substantial benefits over conventionally manufactured molds.   Harbec, Keith Schneider

Redefining the Manufacturing Process: In this case study presentation you will hear how standardizing on a single CAM software for all of its machining has proven to be a key component of one moldmaker’s “power of change” philosophy, which has changed the way the company thinks about manufacturing and increased efficiency by empowering the complete workforce. Paragon D & E, Andrew Samrick and Delcam, Mark Cadogan

What You Don’t Know about High Efficiency Roughing Is Costing You Money: High Efficiency Roughing (HER) is one of the most exciting technologies and machining techniques to hit the machining world in the last decade. This presentation is designed to educate attendees about high efficiency roughing and how this powerful machining strategy can reduce cycle time and help moldmakers increase profits. Autodesk, Al Whatmough