We offer mold repair services and have a customer known for their repetitive catastrophic tool damage.

There are two recurring issues that are easily remedied if the customer was willing to make the necessary adjustments.

1. They are not using the low pressure setting on the molding press to minimize the damage. It takes a lot of pressure to close a mold. However just before the mold closes, you want to lower the pressure in case there’s anything in the way. This way, a crash is detected by the machine and the damage is minimized. There is no cost to this, it’s in the programming of newer presses and was initiated in presses from the outset i.e. built before 1990 via hand valves that were adjustable. It’s nothing new to a reasonably experienced process technician. And though it would not fully resolve the issue, it would greatly reduce the amount of damage.
2. These tools have slides that pass over the part ejection pins. To fully resolve the issue, you want to ensure the ejection assembly is fully returned prior to the mold closing. If this is not done, any moving section of the tool will collide with the pins and without using the low pressure setting, will result in catastrophic damage.

With every service report we send, we clearly state the root cause. With enough of this continued abuse, the mold will inevitably crack and be unrepairable. Then they will be prematurely needing a new tool and possibly tarnish their reputation with the amount of downtime required to reverse engineer a new tool.

As these continue coming through the door, we’ve gone as far as making replacement parts to keep in stock knowing that the customer is unwilling to make simple changes improving our turnaround.

What’s happening on your molding floor? Are you hiring qualified people? At what point does someone say, this is costing too much in repair or hurting our reputation?