Moisture, moisture, moisture.

Think about how you store, prepare and mold plastic resin.

If moisture is present during molding.

You are going to have splay marks on you apart.

The good news . . .

Splay is distinctive.

And it’s easy to spot.

In every molding process, the material gets heated, melted, rotated, squeezed and pushed.

All of this abuse stresses the material causing some breakdown.

The breakdown is referred to as “material degradation”.

When the material gets stressed and degraded, several material performance factors suffer.

Two of the main breakdowns are . . .

• Mechanical

• Splitting

Degraded material will have lower mechanical properties.

It may perform badly in drop, functional and environmental testing.

Melt flow rate versus melt flow index
These are interchangeable terms, right?
They basically mean the same thing.
Am I right?
Am I right?

Yes, there is some truth in this statement.
The terms are used in an interchangeable manner when discussing material flow.

But. . .
They’re not the same.
Let’s look at the two acronyms and their respective units.

What do you do when you have loads of tools running at the same time?

There isn’t enough time in the day to give them all equal attention.

You feel like your hair is on fire.

And that you may be missing some serious tooling issues.

This can be stressful.

The customer <==> vendor relationship is key to all manufacturing success. When the relationship works; everything works.

Yes, vendor and customer have different agendas, objectives and pressures.

But there are huge common overlaps where both parties can gain significant advantage.

Establish an early relationship with your vendor.

Imagine yourself as a member of the vendor’s team.

Help them with their problems. Listen to their challenges.

If you have a non standard finish.

A mirror finished area.

Or have draft vs roughness issues.

Then . . .

These are early signs that you may be walking into future problems. Don't worry. Early bad news is good news.

It's best to chat about and test these things as early as possible. Hoping that stuff will figure itself out by DVT is not a good strategy. A bad, bad approach.

Why does The Complete DFM Tool put more focus on maintenance?

Some tools need extra peace-of-mind. Extra insurance.

“ A crash on this tool will be expensive and will require 4 weeks to fix”

If this is your situation. Ask the following question.

Do you need to add cameras to the process?

Some delicate and expensive tooling operations require CCD camera technology. An extra level of monitoring.

OK, as a starting point: lets consider the following questions.

Are limit switches wired to the machine controller?

The first thing to consider is having open/close tracking on the mechanicals of your tool.

Making sure bits are where there are supposed to be before the next action takes place.

As a planning guide, apply limit switches to tricky mechanical sequences, to delicate moving elements and to expensive tool components.

Get a full list of the available machinery at your vendor.

Check the data on tonnage, manufacturer and age.
What machines are planned for YOUR program?
Did anyone from your team inspect the machines on site?

Get eyes-on the equipment that the vendor plans to use on your program.

Molding has 2 gear settings

1. Fill stage

2. Packing/Holding stage

Part is filled to approximately 95% with ram speed.

Packing pressure is applied for the last 5%.

This finishes the fill and compensates for the cooling shrinkage.