Competitive technology: General Industry Coverage

Moldmakers use teamwork and advanced manufacturing software to compete in a tough global market.

Every segment of manufacturing faces unique challenges. Tool and die makers, however, seem to endure an outsized number of challenges.

Machining molds typically involves creating complex contours and fine surface finishes. Molds are high-value items usually produced in single-digit volumes, making gradual process development and scrapping parts a costly exercise. Moldmakers’ customers generally want to get their products to market as fast as possible, so lead times can be short and inflexible. Finally, overseas competition puts added pressure on U.S. shops.

Moldmakers are facing the challenges with a combination of technology and teamwork, and CAD/CAM software is a key competitive tool.

Standardize to Customize

Speed-to-market pressures mean prototype or preproduction molds have even tighter deadlines than production molds. “Our customers demand that we produce tooling and parts rapidly and to production standards of accuracy and quality,” said Mark Heckman, manager of rapid tools and injection molding at Paramount Industries Inc., Langhorne, Pa. Paramount is a prototype manufacturer and provider of product development services, including design and engineering, rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and new direct digital rapid manufacturing technology that produces custom parts directly from digital input.

“Our tools are often used as bridge tools, while the production tool is being built,” Heckman said. Instead of constructing multicavity tools to produce mass quantities of parts, Paramount makes prototype and production single-cavity molds that yield production-quality parts. Depending on the material to be molded, the number of parts required and the parts’ complexity, the mold may be machined from tool steel or aluminum.

Heckman said nearly every mold is a custom design. “Every customer’s geometry is different, it’s always new,” he said. To produce custom designs economically, Paramount standardizes as many aspects of the mold production process as possible prior to customization. “We have our own standard mold bases, with standard inserts that go into them. We match the part with a mold base, then machine our customer’s geometry into the insert.”

All Paramount toolmakers are CAD and CNC programming literate and each has a seat of Mastercam CAD/CAM software from CNC Software Inc., Tolland, Conn. The toolmakers “are using the software to design the mold inserts and write the CNC programs,” Heckman said.

Heckman noted that a Paramount customer typically provides an IGES or STEP file of the final part, then the toolmaker applies a shrink factor to the model dictated by the characteristics of the plastic material from which the part will be molded. From that model, the toolmakers create the geometry of the mold components and then the toolpaths to machine them.

It is important that the software can create good geometry as well as good toolpaths. The ability of Mastercam software to handle both surface and solid models is also crucial. While surface models are often preferred in the design of complex aesthetic contours, solid models provide a “clean” engineering view of the entire part, Heckman said. “A lot of our personal-products customers do free-form surface modeling using packages like Rhino. Mastercam allows me to work with both surface geometry and solids. It gives me more options when we are doing some fairly complex surfaces.”

The software’s surface design capabilities permits geometry creation, modeling and editing, and has design analysis tools and 2-D and 3-D associative dimensioning, according to CNC Software. An integrated add-on solids modeler provides construction techniques for solids and permits combination of solids and surfaces in the same model.

Heckman said Mastercam is easy to learn, an important consideration when Paramount hires experienced moldmakers who are not CAD/CAM experts. The shop also uses the software in its training program. “In 2007, we restarted our moldmaker apprentice program,” Heckman said. “We realized our group’s growth could not be solely dependent on hiring experienced moldmakers.”

Balanced Resources

Maintaining mold quality and meeting short lead times while maximizing shop resources is a familiar balancing act for moldmakers. Die Technology Inc., Osseo, Minn., often has a week to complete what used to be a 3-week job machining die and fixture components. The shop designs and builds stamping dies, tools and fixtures for the medical, electronic, defense and telecommunication industries. It also performs wire and sinker EDMing and designs and builds special machines, including a line of hole-punching machines for catheters used in the medical industry.

Courtesy of B. Kennedy

Molds are high-value items, usually produced in single-digit volumes, and machining mold tooling typically involves creating complex contours and fine surface finishes.

To overcome the volatility of the manufacturing market, Die Technology maximizes productivity by providing its employees with advanced technology that enables the company to do more with fewer people, according to Wyatt Neubauer, toolmaker. A key element of that effort is ESPRIT CAM software from DP Technology Corp., Camarillo, Calif., an integrated 3-D system.

Neubauer considers the 3-D aspect of toolmaking to be its major challenge. For example, the shop makes pins as small as 0.003 ” in diameter with 0.003 ” or 0.002 ” profiles on top of them. “Everything has to be formed in 3-D, all the contours,” he said. “With a 2-D CAM system, we couldn’t produce the shapes and functionality we needed with any kind of speed; 3-D CAM enables us to make it all without using special-order tools.”

ESPRIT software offers 20 different milling strategies, including a variety of roughing, finishing and surface contouring and engraving methods, according to DP Technology. Users can combine the techniques to maximize efficiency. The newly introduced ESPRIT 2010 software release incorporates capabilities that were formerly included in the ESPRIT Mold add-on package.

The shop has used ESPRIT software for nearly 20 years, initially for wire EDMing. Recently, additional capabilities and enhanced ease of use have prompted Die Technology to apply the software throughout the shop. “It runs everything from the mill for making electrodes to the wire EDM to the sinker EDM,” Neubauer said.

The software also has automation capabilities that save time when handling repetitive operations. As an example, Neubauer cited the machining of 20 electrodes in sets of four that are similar but feature different offsets. “Instead of reprogramming every part, we just program one electrode and save it. We then lay that saved process on top of the other part models, and the software programs them automatically. It’s a one-click process.”

Technology Plus Teamwork

Moldmakers can maximize their competitiveness by combining advanced technology with teamwork. “To compete we need to use technology to our best advantage and build our molds not only quicker but cheaper, and still have the same quality,” said Dennis Wood, tooling manager at the Constantine, Mich., division of Vaupell Inc.

Courtesy of Vaupell

At Vaupell, high-tech metal-removal equipment includes Röders high-speed CNC machining centers. With Cimatron CAD/CAM software on the shop floor, operators can determine part dimensions and machine directly from the 3-D model.

Courtesy of Vaupell

Integrated CAD/CAM software systems engineered for moldmakers address all mold components and enable shops to consolidate and streamline the mold design and machining process.

Headquartered in Seattle, Vaupell supplies prototype and production injection molded products and assemblies. Wood said the Constantine operation is a “one-stop shop” for mold design and construction, as well as plastic part production. The facility’s in-house tooling capability permits immediate response to in-production change orders and also facilitates tool maintenance and repair. About 65 to 70 percent of the facility’s output consists of medical products, including instrumentation and bioresorbable implants. The plant is currently expanding its work in aerospace and defense products.

In many cases, Vaupell competes with small shops that have low overhead. “They can take a job on for very little profit just to keep their lights on when times are tough,” Wood said. “We are competing against that, so we have to work smarter. We need to get rid of any extra work that is not value added to the customer, and eliminate any excess overhead that we can to bring the cost of our tools down.”

Cost reduction includes “as much unattended machining as possible,” he said. Metal-removal equipment at the shop includes Röders high-speed CNC machining centers, Charmilles CNC sinker EDMs and Agie wire EDMs.