July 09, 2021

A Guide To Plastic Injection Mold Tooling Management & Risk Reduction For Buyers

43 minutes

In this episode...

Are you developing a new product which has plastic parts? If so, you'll need tooling made which including the mold for making the parts, so you're not going to want to miss this episode where we explain how to manage tooling and reduce your risks! Typically, the tooling (mold) needs to be designed, fabricated, tested, and stored and moved correctly. But how do you manage all of these efficiently and reduce the risks of things going wrong?

Sofeast's CEO, Renaud Anjoran, and Adrian from the team discuss the risks and best practices of tooling management and use here.

Any questions about tooling management? We can help, as we help customers fabricate, manage, and store tooling in China and beyond. Let us know.

Show Notes

00:49 - Introduction.

01:05 - Defining 'tooling management.' Basically, tooling management is setting your expectations, review what the supplier/tooling shop is doing and confirm it makes sense, double-check and confirm that the tooling reaches your requirements, and retain access and control over the tooling.

08:39 - Some of the key risks you'll face throughout the lifecycle of a piece of plastic injection-molding tooling (and how to overcome them).

Plastic part design.

Sourcing the tooling supplier.

Selecting the right tooling supplier.

Mold design & drawings.

Mold fabrication.

Tooling trials & adjustments.

Transfer of tooling to the injection-molding factory.

Setup of the tooling for mass production.

During production.

Pulling the tooling out of a supplier's factory.

Tooling end-of-life.

39:24 - If you buy and own the tooling you need your development contract with the supplier to include the following...

These points help prevent you from being hooked by your supplier and unable to walk away (the amount of risk depends on the type of supplier you work with):

Outline who owns the IP rights to the tooling and its design.

Clarify the obligations of the supplier to keep the tooling in good working condition

Indicate how many shots the tooling should be capable of if using the correct materials and processes

Agree on the process to be followed if you wish to move to another supplier (access to the tooling) and that the supplier will be responsible for fixing any damage or problems with the tooling caused during their stewardship of it

42:37 - The process to follow when moving tooling between suppliers. At Sofeast, we follow a specific process for doing this safely and securely, and it's outlined in this blog post.

43:09 - Wrapping up.