What do Look for in a Mold Supplier?

When engineering comes to purchasing with a requirement for a mold for a new plastic component or a group of components for a new product, many times the purchasing person isn’t knowledgeable enough about purchasing molds to know where to go for the requirement. In some companies, project or product engineers are in charge of finding a mold manufacturer, but even then there are questions about what to look for in a mold supplier.

Many purchasing people will go online as a first step, and there they will find a plethora of mold manufacturers. So how to pick the right one for the job?

Most mold shops have similar machine tool capabilities and CAD/CAM software systems. Where the differences come into play are the mold types in which different shops specialize. Some of the types of molds include:

Insert Molds: molds which accommodate inserts (either robotically or manually inserted) which the plastic is molded around to eliminate secondary or post-molding operations.

Overmolding Molds: molds which accommodate placement of a substrate part over which another material is molded, i.e. and ABS substrate with a thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) molded over it.

Two-shot Molds: mold which are built to accommodate multi-material molding or muti-color molding, such as an automotive tail light, which might require both red and orange plycarbonate material to be molded for a complete tail light.

Rotary Stack Molds: molds that produce multiple parts that require multiple processes. The mold is built in a “cube” and after each process the mold rotates 90 degrees for the next process. This is for highly complex components requiring both multi-material or multiple steps to complete, but the result is final, completed and assembled unit. Eliminates secondary operations, multiple steps after molding or multiple molds to make a complete unit.

Unscrewing Molds: molds that accommodate threaded parts such as screws, caps and closures, and generally have either id or od threads.

Some mold manufacturers specialize in very large-sized molds such as those that would be used for bumpers on cars or trucks. Some specialize in very small molds for micro-molding.

Mold manufacturers also have market niches with which they have become well-acquainted with such as extremely high-cavity molds for the packaging industry; or smaller cavitation molds for the medical industry; or very aesthetic molds for the cosmetics packaging industry.