Tooling and Moldmaking

Seminar Overview

The mold is where part quality, cycle time, and capital are all decided, yet most engineers inherit tooling decisions made years earlier under schedule pressure. This advanced seminar teaches mold engineering from the primary trade source for the craft — the *MoldMaking Technology* magazine archive, the same body of moldbase-construction, machining, EDM, cooling-circuit, venting, hot-runner, steel-selection, and maintenance material that moldmakers and tooling engineers rely on in production — not from vendor catalogs or sales decks. ETS engineers have specified, reviewed, debugged, and forensically dissected molds for 41 years; this course packages that experience against the documented best practice in the trade press.

The curriculum follows a mold's real life: moldbase and cavity/core architecture, steel selection and coatings, machining and EDM of cores and cavities, cooling circuit design, venting, gate and runner engineering, slides and lifters, hot-runner systems, and finally maintenance and the debug/maintenance loop that determines whether a tool performs for millions of cycles or becomes an annual re-cut. Each module is anchored by generic **Moldmaking Case Study:** items — the same classes of tooling problems ETS has reviewed across automotive, medical, and consumer tooling, presented without OEM attribution because the teaching value is the failure mechanism, not the logo.

Attendees leave able to read and critique a mold design, specify steel and cooling for the resin and volume in question, review a tool build against the MMT-documented construction practices, run a disciplined mold debug/qualification, and write a maintenance and ownership plan that protects the tooling investment.

Ideal Learner

• Tooling engineers and tooling managers who specify, buy, or qualify injection molds
• Mold designers and senior moldmakers advancing to design responsibility
• Plastics/process engineers whose part-quality problems trace to tooling decisions
• Purchasing/quality engineers performing mold build audits and tooling transfers
• Automotive, medical, electrical/electronic, packaging, and consumer-product molders and their suppliers

Learning Objectives

• Evaluate a moldbase and cavity/core architecture for the part family, resin, and production volume — including steel-safe vs. cut-safe strategy and future change provisions
• Select mold steels (P20, H-13, S7, 420SS, etc.) and surface coatings/treatments (nitriding, plating, PVD) against resin abrasiveness/corrosivity, cycle, and budget
• Specify cooling circuit design (baffle/bubbler, spiral cores, thermal pins, conformal options) and predict its effect on cycle and warpage
• Review venting, gate, and runner engineering against the resin family — including gate type/land sizing and runner cross-sections and layouts
• Design and debug slide/lifter action, hot-runner systems, and the maintenance program that protects both

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.