moving injection mould tools from one moulder to another? 1

[waynethepain]

Hi,

Does anyone have any tips for moving injection mould tools from one moulder to another?

For example:
Build up stock quietly so if something goes wrong you can still supply your customers.
Is it best to turn up without notice or say you are doing a stock-take and put them all in a van so they don't have time to sabotage them.

Thanks in advence

 

[MikeHalloran]

I have seen literally hundreds of molds moved from one supplier to another, as Supply Chain Management arrived.

Not a goddamn one of them could produce acceptable parts after the move without major modifications, no matter whether the move came as a surprise to the original molder or not. It also just happened that the new molder was forced to adjust his part pricing upward, in light of the necessary modifications and their effect on cycle time. ... every goddamn time.

Mold bases are made commercially, and generally interchange among similar molding machines.

Any assertion that completed, operational, successful molds interchange among molders is completely without foundation, in my experience.

If you want to change molders, buy new molds from/through the new molder, and leave the existing molds where they are.
It will be much cheaper than moving (and modifying) the molds, and there is much less risk to your business.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[ornerynorsk]

That's pretty good advice Mike has for you. Where necessary modifications are going to come into play, and be invoiced, are the ejector interface, waterline hook-ups, core pull hook-ups, sprue bushing, and possibly the locating ring. Then the new molder has to spend considerable time dialing in all of the process parameters to get the dimensions and part qualities that you need. The molder that you pulled the tool from is not going to happily supply all of that information, and even if they did, every machine is a little different.

As Mike, said, there is way more to it than just pulling the tool and dropping it off at the new shop. And the politics are such that if you ever need to go back to the original molder for anything, the bridge is likely burned, whether you think it closed on good terms or not.

Having said all of that, I've very successfully pulled a few tools from poorly performing vendors and given them to competent shops, with a net overall savings. More often than not, hidden costs pop up.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[BrienSH]

As a molding and tooling company customer relations guy, we have received transferred molds and have had a couple of customers move molds out 90% of those have been ones who transferred them from another molder. Here are some of the things I would recommend in addition to ornerynorsk's good suggestions and hopefully help that no one else have the bad experiences MikeHalloran has had.

1. Have advance stock on hand in the event that the mold does need modifications or dial-in time, unless the reason you need the molding to be done elsewhere is part quality then just get your molds.
2. Request digital/print copies of the CAD and mold parameter files. You paid for the mold, parts AND the processes developed to create the parts. There should not be some secret sauce claims, poorly calibrated or worn out machines can require constant attention to be able to produce parts which is essentially a secret sauce hard to duplicate.
3. Avoid too many accusations and threats until after you have your molds, files and parts in hand so that you do not suffer any punitive delays or who knows what.
4. Determine if the new molding shop uses or can accommodate MUD bases, stand alone molds, hot runners etc... matched to your mold set-up.
5. Verify what the molds will be released with parts still in place as the list of items ornerynorsk gave. The new mold shop will need to know if they need to order removed items. However, I recommend looking closely at the mold/tooling contract and seeing if they billed for those items, if so then you have a right to have them ship with the mold which can minimize alignment and downtime issues.

Best of luck in the future