Why Injection Mold Maintenance Matters
When you invest in a high-quality piece of equipment or tool you expect better quality and longevity. Tool lifespan is just as much as structure and design to the quality and the cost of your project.
Replacing tools can be expensive. Continual and careful mold maintenance, however, can mitigate the risk of production error and drastically reduce your total cost of ownership.
What Does Mold Maintenance Entail?
Injection molding is renowned for efficient and high-quality mass production. Tool, or mold maintenance, regards the routine cleaning, evaluation, and repairs of an injection mold to keep it performing at the highest level possible. To prevent your investment from malfunctioning and ultimately harming the production process, preventative maintenance, or inspections and repairs performed regularly over the life of a mold, is vital.
The Importance of Injection Mold Maintenance
While many consumers don’t focus on tool maintenance when choosing a supplier, worn parts can affect product quality and, ultimately, a company’s long-term sales and service platform. To prevent product imperfections and inefficiencies, ensuring your injection mold remains in good condition with preventative maintenance can improve tool longevity and part quality. With interim maintenance, the risk of imperfections going unnoticed with a damaged mold is eliminated.
What Happens if You Neglect Maintenance?
Improperly managing a tool for long periods of time might lead to you having to pay for significant repairs or even completely replace the tool. Ultimately this will significantly increase your total cost of ownership. The mold may also be damaged due to vent deposit, which can lead to part defects and unexpected production errors. Once this occurs, you’re looking at a number of costly repairs. It’s much cheaper to perform regular maintenance.
The Benefits of Maintenance
In addition to cost-savings and improving time-to-market, adequate maintenance and repair can result in a multitude of benefits. Maintaining your tooling will ensure high-quality, consistent part production.
By investing in a supplier that properly maintains your tooling investments, you’re saving money down the line. By reducing the risk of unexpected breakdowns, or expensive repairs, cleaning and maintaining your tooling will reduce your total cost of ownership.
In most cases, you won’t perform the maintenance yourself. You’ll need to select a molder with experience in performing this type of maintenance. These experts know what to look for when inspecting injection molding tooling and equipment.
How Your Supplier Can Help
A properly equipped injection molder can help determine the best development tools and demonstrate proper maintenance techniques.
They can also assist you in optimizing your part and mold design. These experts have years of experience doing this, so they’re likely to understand the finer points of mold design. Listen to their advice – they can help you save a lot of time and money upfront.
Finally, working with your supplier can also help you get the most out of your investment. Tooling for injection molding is expensive, so you want to make certain you’re investment will be properly made and maintained. Your supplier should take all of your needs into account and recommend the best course of action.
Improve Your Tools
Now that you’ve read up on injection mold maintenance, you’ll be better able to protect your investment and manage your production platform. By implementing a regular maintenance schedule, you’ll increase tool longevity and produce high-quality parts more consistently.
If you’re in need of assistance, you can contact New Berlin Plastics to discuss. The experts here are ready to help you understand the importance of proper mold design and preventative maintenance to ensure you get the most out of your tooling investment.
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