The maintenance techniques practiced daily at mold benches around the world are truly as unique as the individuals that practice them. You can put one mold in front of a dozen repair technicians and come away with a dozen different methods, sequences and tools used in the eight stages of repair. But are they all effective?

 

Some maintenance methods are really ingenious and work great when trying to simplify a job such as using a cone-shaped jig to slide o-rings onto cores and cavities or a special set of cutters used to pull insulated runners off probe tips without damaging them. Or how to use a common flow meter to detect a small water line restriction, or a one-handed removing tool that can replace a hammer and punch or a cavity block leak detector made of clear acrylic or a small piece of stiff piano wire contained inside a brass rod to remove obstructions and unblock small gates.

 

The skills required to develop these types of specific, shop-made tools and methods are what excellence in mold repair is all about. Mold repair work is all about creating for the job. To create an effective tool or technique, one must understand the challenge of the task precisely.

 

So what is the problem? Unfortunately, not all ideas are good ones, and many of these not-so-hot maintenance ideas are passed down to other repair techs in the shop through the OJT (on the job) process.

 

In an average-sized shop of six repair technicians, usually only one or two will be “out of the box” thinkers that as a habit, attempt to buck past traditions and look for better methods or tools to perform a critical or tedious job while the other four will pretty much do as they have learned from peers over months and years of helping. Good or bad—fast or slow—effective or not—this is the way we have always done it, and we don’t want to change.

 

Watching this unfold is both fascinating and disturbing. Fascinating, because some of the clever ideas to better work on molds are just downright inspiring that make other people anxious to get back to their benches to try out the new or modified idea. The disturbing part is that other ideas and methods are not too inspiring, and some even dangerous.

 

Conversation between craftsmen who use their hands along with their heads is usually an enlightening “gosh—why didn’t I think of that” learning experience. One simple idea has the potential of saving a company thousands of dollars in reduced labor hours, tooling or mistakes or accidents.

And it is by no means, a guarantee that those who have 20, 30 or more years behind a bench are plying their trade as efficiently and effectively as that younger, out of the box thinker that just might be sitting next to you in a classroom someday or in a repair shop in another state.

Training, and industry observations—you just can’t compete without them.

 

Not all hot runners are designed to provide the best mold construction and ease of maintenance. The selection of a system that does not allow for easy mold construction or maintenance can result in significantly higher initial mold costs followed by unwarranted, unexpected service costs throughout the life of the mold.