SLIDESHOW: MMT's Top 10 Blog Posts of 2016

I cannot tell a lie. I was beyond thrilled to finally see Mike Rowe acknowledge moldmaking in his quest to promote the value of manufacturing to this country.

Man, material, machines, methods and metrics. What does this refer to? A suite of technologies, hardware, software and services focused on returning leaked profit to a company's bottom line, according to 5ME.

Get a load of the young girl in the photo here. Yep, it’s yours truly, Cyndi Kustush, at about six years old, visiting my dad’s shop with my mom during the holiday season of 1970.

Slide lock angles are prone to wear if they are not maintained properly because their surface experiences a lot of mechanical friction during mold close. Randy shares pointers for avoiding this wear.

I met Roland Krevitt shortly after we launched MoldMaking Technology magazine back in 1998 and he had a wealth of experience and stories to share back then. He is still sharing them today. They are mostly about his experience with mold materials, which is always quite the hot topic with MMT's readers, so I thought I'd let him share some of his experiences here with you.

Randy discusses tips and tricks for avoiding mold downtime when it comes to hydraulics for slides, ejection or cores and hot runner plugs or connections.

Over the years, I have listened as my dad related stories of how someone called him or came to his mold shop to enlist his help with making a new product that they invented, usually for the consumer market.

Not too long ago I blogged about how moldmakers are often approached by entrepreneurial types with no manufacturing background about building molds for new product “inventions”. I also touched on the fact that many moldmakers themselves invent things, and I requested personal stories from readers. This is about a great product that didn’t do so great.

If you can't tell from that headline, it's that time of year again. Time for you to send us your top 10 reasons to be a moldmaker, so we can create our annual free t-shirt giveaway that shows off the industry's humor! Here is a taste of some of our past winning entries to help get you thinking in the right direction.

HONORABLE MENTION: The moldmaking community is a family of sorts, and this becomes very evident every year at Amerimold when we celebrate our annual Leadtime Leader Awards Competition. Last week this was taken to another level when 2016 Winner Krieger Craftsmen registered a busload of people to attend Amerimold and make their presence known.

HONORABLE MENTION: Do you ever ask yourself why cycle time matters? Although the level of impact may vary across the supply chain, one thing is certain: reducing cycle times can lead to hidden cost savings. And with cooling and recovery making up more than 80 percent of the injection molding cycle, it is the perfect place for improvement to help reduce cycle times. Listen to this webinar to learn how to achieve optimal cooling through analysis.