By Brenda Clark, engineering manager
HASCO America, Inc.

Through the years, many companies have offered standardization of mold base assemblies and certain mold action components. The standardization of mold bases and components began at HASCO in 1924. Hugo Hasenclever, a goldsmith and engraver, was forming tools that were each unique and, with his son, Rolf, started to think about efficiency and simplicity. This uniqueness did not take into consideration the need for ease of serviceability.

Standardization – it is all around us now in every aspect of life, and these innovations bring simplicity into mold manufacturing.

What are the advantages of mold base and component standardization?

The one advantage to standardization of mold base plates and assemblies is in quickly ordering off-the-shelf items. Mold designers and mold builders can use this concept further with the many mold action components required to make the mold design function.

Standardization of mold components also will make it easier to order off-the-shelf for initial build and for future maintenance and repair needs. Standard mold components also have standard available spare parts. A supplier will have a spare parts catalog on hand – or at least a product breakdown – showing available spare parts on the shelf.

What should a mold design specification document contain?

When designing any cold runner, hot runner, three-plate or combination mold assembly, specifications are important for clarity. This documentation starts in the hands of the plant owner, OEM and mold designer, who create a plan for items required in each mold assembly, from the top clamp down through to the bottom clamp plate and everything in between required to produce the final molded article. Standards for items such as sprue bushings, ejector pins, guided ejection, plate guidance (such as side locks and latch sequences) will help to save time and money. That holds true for special actions like slides, collapsible or threaded cores, lifters and two-stage ejection, too.

Having an in-house mold design specification check list document will assist mold designers and mold builders, as well as suppliers. This documentation should highlight all sections for the mold design, from injection to ejection. It can even go as far as to state how certain size molds are to be designed for certain repeat customer requirements. Standardization is key for every step of the process and every location required to have a hand in making the project go as smoothly as planned. These documents are to be considered “live” documents and should be checked and updated frequently.

New products are coming to the market every day in all aspects of mold build and molding. Keeping specification documentation up to date will help keep the mold assemblies up to date as well. When first created, the documentation will be the guideline for all projects and can be kept as the corporate standard for projects. The documentation also will be tailored for each individual project and kept with that project portfolio. The document should be tailored by the mold builder and customer, and it should be maintained where the mold is finally in process or stored.

The mold also can hold a copy of this documentation, along with process information, and a bill of materials on the newest mold component – the mold memory USB stick that is easily mounted in a plate or rail within the mold. The documentation can be updated during any scheduled maintenance or repair, while the main corporate documentation should be reviewed either yearly or bi-yearly.

Why use a mold design specification document?

HASCO’s check list document to assist with standardization for mold design and mold build even extends into processing. “Specifications for Injection Molds” allows the user to “check off” standard requirements for every aspect of the mold design and mold build, right down to the specific material and coating for each component used in the mold build.

In mold design and build today, metric mold plates and metric mold components are 99 percent of the supplied mold assemblies in the world. This amount of product use in the industry has allowed metric parts to be much lower in cost than the imperial or inch-equivalent parts, while allowing the quality to remain at the highest standard. This is why HASCO made the change over to mostly metric mold plate and metric mold components back in 2008.

For example, if a mold builder is designing a standard four-cavity mold for one customer, valuable time and effort can be saved if another customer contacts the mold builder with a similar four-cavity design. Both mold bases will have the same size and standard components, but the cavity and core will change. By creating a specification check list, and only making cavity and core changes between the two individual mold builds, savings can be achieved. The specification list will assist with future mold designs and builds, with another advantage of making the bill of materials and ordering a breeze.

How can standardizations and design flexibility work together?

Let’s say a mold designer must create, for instance, an A-series mold using a standard mold base. A-series molds have top clamp plate, A plate, B plate, support plate, ejector plates, ejector rails and a bottom clamp plate. With HASCO mold plates, a designer can specify from the top clamp plate to the bottom clamp plate in A-series, B-series, stripper series, single floating and multiple floating plate assemblies with ease. Basically, any mold plate combination is an easier build up to specify from the beginning of the project. This is why some items are not included as a standard from the start, such as the return pins, guided ejection and some center holes and parts. These items, when left out of the original standard, allow designers much more flexibility of design for water-line inlet and outlets or return pins with spring pockets fully enclosed into the mold plates (no more springs breaking through the side of the mold base), to name just a few.

From there, mold designers start to add in what is needed for mold function to properly manufacture the current molded product design. Will it need clean room coatings? Guided ejection? Side locks? Date stamps? Ejector pins or blades? These are additional standardizations in any build! Any component within a design can be standardized, even down to the ejector pin anti-rotation or keyed feature as a standard item. With standards, the end user also will not have to worry about “special” items at mold preventive maintenance or mold repair intervals. This will allow the end user to get back to production faster, easier and more economically.

Remember, this standardization is not limited to only one customer, or one mold design. The standards can be tailored to specific company requirements across the board and kept as a guide for future employees and projects. Small and large projects can be covered within the same standards.

While not every mold can be fully standardized, if “special” items are required, they also can be documented so the end user is fully aware of any extra lead time requirements that will have to be scheduled with special manufacturing time. The concept also is possible with the proper documentation specification including “special” notes. This allows for standardizations while still having design flexibility.

Brenda Clark has been working for more than 35 years in the plastics industry in engineering, mold design and sales. Specialties include areas of standard mold bases – metric and inch, mold base components, technical specialty components for special mold base operations, hot runner systems, customer service and application reviews for new and old molds. HASCO, founded in 1924 in Lüdenscheid, Germany, is today the international leading supplier of modular standardized components and accessories. Its range takes in more than 100,000 products, providing customized and cost-efficient solutions for tool and moldmaking, as well as for the plastics processing industry. For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.hasco.com.