Whether you’re prototyping, producing, or mass producing, tooling is one of the most important steps in setting up your manufacturing operation. Tooling is the process by which manufacturers obtain the components their machines need in order to operate and produce their desired end product. The ways that tooling impacts a manufacturing operation are imperative. Not only is the tooling of your own manufacturing important, but also of the tools themselves that will be a part of your own operation. It’s necessary to have components that have been tooled to specifications, have high quality, and will perform under stress.
Potential Effects of Tooling
The end result of your operation’s tooling is going to affect every aspect of the business and its success. If an operation has been improperly tooled, then it will inevitably have a less efficient running cost, slowing things down. When an improperly tooled machine fails, it can have disastrous consequences, not limited to time lost, loss of product, and potential hazard to employees or customers.
When an operation has been tooled correctly it will work at maximum efficiency, but that isn’t the only benefit. Any manufacturing that has the best components will have a superior product. Contamination and imperfections will occur in manufacturing businesses that haven’t properly tooled their machines. The components that affect the process don’t just include the more prominent parts of the machine that do the most work towards creating the end part. For example: seals have a massive impact on the efficiency and safety of an operation. Preventing both contamination and loss of product, seals play an integral role in nearly all manufacturing machine tooling.
Tooling Methods
One of the most important aspects of tooling is how these components are themselves created and designed. Tooling can be extremely expensive in the early stages of prototyping if you are doing the process entirely from scratch. Luckily, manufacturers of components have adapted to the needs of today’s market with new tooling methods based upon altering existing molds to fit the needs of new applications.
One such method is injection molding which takes molds, usually made of metal, and injects the expected material that a component will ultimately utilize. Using inserts in these already designed molds allows for customization for the needs of a specific application. So, instead of having to create an entirely new mold, which can be cost prohibitive and crippling to smaller startups, an existing mold is adjusted to work for a new manufacturing operation.
Compression/Transfer molding is another process by which tooling is done. In this method liquid is forced from a “pot” that holds the correct amount of material for a mold into said mold. This process is designed for the economics of prototyping and allows for adjusting until the final design is reached.
When cost is an issue then it’s vital to consider cost when deciding how to tool a manufacturing operation. Gallagher Fluid Seals and its partners are can help in all aspects of proper tooling. Both our capabilities and our suppliers can help adjust to the demands of your specific operations.
Use an Expert
The long term consequences of tooling for manufacturing operations demands that your tooling is done correctly and efficiently. When an operation is improperly tooled, it will lose money through a variety of avenues. Consulting an expert in tooling is one of the smartest decisions to be made when tooling a manufacturing operations.
Parts of this original article were contributed by Real Seal Co. and can be found here.
For more information about tooling, or if you need assistance in tooling, contact Gallagher Fluid Seals today.