By combining our direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) and CNC machining into a single production system, we’ve developed a range of innovative techniques for the manufacture of plastic injection mould tooling. 

Using this hybrid manufacturing system, we can offer:  

• The ability to reduce lead times for plastic injection mould tooling, to just a few weeks 
• Special tool inserts that eliminate the problems of gas traps in plastic injection mouldings 
• Conformal cooled plastic injection mould tooling that improves cycle times and part quality on complex or curved mould shapes. 

Choosing the right method for plastic injection mould tooling  

Although our hybrid manufacturing system allows us to offer an exciting and innovative range of injection mould tooling services for our customers, it is not always the ideal solution for manufacturing tooling or tool inserts. 

As a leading injection moulding company, we have an extensive injection mould toolmaking department equipped with conventional EDM and CNC milling, turning and grinding systems. With our 3D printing capability, we’re therefore in an ideal position to be able to advise on the best methods of producing injection mould tools. 

For injection mould tools or inserts with complex geometries, such as hinges, or where conformal cooling channels have to follow curved or spiral channels, then our hybrid metal additive system is ideal. 

Some injection mould tooling, however, is easier to manufacture using CNC machining. This is especially true if the injection moulded part has a simple design or incorporates large flat surfaces, such as a typical enclosure or panel. 

Alternatively, it may be appropriate to combine 3D printing with finishing by CNC machining. For example, an injection moulded tool insert that has both complex geometries and flat surface areas can firstly be printed layer by layer using our laser metal sintering machine. The tooling insert can then be finished on a high-speed CNC milling machine to produce the required surface. 

Experience and knowledge are key for successful injection mould tooling 

Ultimately, the choice of manufacturing techniques for producing plastic injection mould tooling should be governed by the experience and knowledge of your plastic injection moulding supplier. At OGM, we’ve almost 60 years working as a plastic injection moulding company, supporting customers across the industry. 

We have extensive knowledge and experience, using both conventional toolmaking and 3D printing technologies. That means that we can truly offer unbiased advice and guidance to help you develop plastic injection mould tooling that produces the highest quality injection moulded parts, cost-effectively and to your exact specification, no matter how complex or challenging that may be.  

If looking for advice and support on tooling or injection from an experienced plastic injection moulding company then please get in touch with our team. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many of the fragilities inherent within modern global supply chains. When supply chains function without disruption then everything runs smoothly. But, as COVID-19 has shown, a major event causes chaos.   

And it’s not just major events that can prevent the smooth flow of parts and products around the world. Even in a relatively untroubled year, unexpected local or regional incidents, such as severe weather, cyber or terrorist attacks, tariff wars and Brexit, are all capable of having a disproportionate and potentially significant effect on supply chains. 

The DHL Resilience360 Annual Risk Report 2020 highlighted the impact that fires and ground transportation disruptions had on the supply chain in 2019. These ranged from the Australian bush fires to a fire and chemical spill at the Intercontinental Terminal Company that caused long delays and cancelled deliveries being transported by freight vessels trapped in, and trying to enter, the Houston Ship Canal. Closer to home, political protests in Catalonia led to the closure of the border between Spain and France, preventing 20,000 truck movements, costing an estimated 15m Euros each day in supply chain losses, while a ransomware attack on a major tier 1 aerospace suppler in France led to around 1,000 members of staff being put on furlough for a month while production was halted, with a knock-on effect to customers and companies further down the supply chain. 

Reassessing the nature of supply chains 

One effect of the COVID-19 pandemic for many companies is going to be a major review of their supply chains. In particular, we’re going to see a continuation of the trend that was already emerging pre-COVID, of greater diversification, where OEMs and other companies at the head of the supply chain source from multiple geographies and supply chain partners, to spread their risk.   

We will also see a growing move to reshoring and nearshoring. Again, this trend was already apparent, being driven by the demand for small volume production, greater automation, ever-shorter lead times. In all likelihood, this trend will accelerate in the coming years. 

The impact on plastic injection moulding 

In many respects, we are ahead of the curve. Our investment in our 3D metal printing capabilities, such as our hybrid sintered metal additive technology, has been instrumental in helping us manufacture injection mould tools and injection mould tool inserts quickly and at a competitive cost in the UK. 

This has led to a significant reduction in lead times for injection mould tooling, from months to just a few weeks, especially when compared with injection moulding projects where mould tools are being sourced from the Far East. 

In addition, our investment in automation and robotic systems for many of our plastic injection moulding machines enable us to make significant improvements to cycle rates and thus output, for high volume injection moulding requirements.   

We have also been working with customers to provide bespoke injection moulding services to support their UK and European production operations, often working to tight deadlines and lean manufacturing schedules. For our customers, these dedicated injection moulding services are proving far more cost-effective and resilient than the use of offshore suppliers, with the added advantage of far higher quality and simplicity of communication in the same time zone. 

For plastic injection moulding companies, the reappraisal of supply chain models brought about by COVID-19 may have a significant impact, bringing fresh opportunities as customers seek to bring their sources of supply for injection moulding services and toolmaking closer to home. 

The outbreak of the human coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has strained the supply chains for injection moulded parts significantly. As a result, the need for exceptional standards of quality control has never been greater; the key to the consistent production of high-quality plastic injection moulded parts is the way in which the polymer is cooled after it has filled the mould cavity.  

High injection moulding reject rates 

The uneven cooling of injection moulded parts can create a range of issues. These include distortion which affects: 

• Tolerances 
• Poor crystallisation of polymer, which affects its mechanical properties.  

The more complex and convoluted the design of the tool, the more difficult it becomes to ensure that parts cool uniformly. These issues can lead to high reject rates and increase production costs.   

Legacy methods of injection mould tool cooling 

How then can plastic injection moulders ensure that the parts they manufacture are cooled properly?  

Conventionally, channels through which cooling water can flow are drilled into the tool, but this approach can limit the geometries of the parts to be moulded. Drilled cooling channels must be straight. It can be difficult to position them close to complex, curved or spiral mould shapes for cooling to be consistent across the plastic injection mould tool. This can be especially challenging if cooling channels have to compete for space in the tool with other features, such as ejector pins or moving inserts. 

The obvious solution to these problems is to create cooling channels that have curves and bends in them, enabling them to follow the contours of the mould cavity precisely and to be routed around ejector pins and inserts.  

Conformal cooling can be a challenge 

Producing tools with conformal cooling channels, however, is no easy feat. Using conventional subtractive machining, channels can be created on the surface of inserts, which are then stacked on top of one another to create a finished tool. This process is expensive and time-consuming.  

Similarly, additive manufacturing (AM) processes such as laser sintering are relatively slow, and yield tool inserts with poor surface finishes that must then be machined.  

Our hybrid approach 

We have solved these problems with a process, called ConformL Cool, that exploits the benefits of AM and conventional CNC machining. Using our specially developed machine, the first of its kind to be installed in the UK, we can build steel mould tools or inserts layer–by–layer using laser sintering. After each layer is added, however, automated secondary machining processes rapidly remove any excess material. The high dimensional accuracy and fine surface finish that results enables complex tools with conformal cooling channels to be manufactured automatically in one operation; this can significantly reduce costs and production times, by comparison with conventional subtractive and additive manufacturing techniques.  

As this is our expertise, we’ve created a breakdown in our latest conformal cooling white paper. It outlines our innovative approach to producing plastic injection mould tools efficiently and quickly. Check it out here:

As a leading plastic injection moulders in England and South Wales, we’ve been tracking the impact of COVID-19, or Coronavirus, for us and our customers. Here, at OGM our multiple facilities, paired with a large team of experts, allows for dynamic and efficient production to continue – luckily. As we are aware, this crisis is having a major impact on society – sadly, most of them are negative.

Within the manufacturing industry, however, there has been an unexpected focus by the UK government. Admittedly, with the call for manufacturers to help with the production of ventilators and other urgently needed medical equipment, this has been driven by necessity rather than strategic intent.

Nonetheless, it’s a sign that our politicians may, at last, be changing their views on the manufacturing sector in the UK.  Strangely, as was reported in The Engineer they initially seemed to be under the impression that companies outside the medical device sector might be best placed to meet their plea for help. It is companies within the manufacturing industry, such as ours, that are ready to rise to the challenge to support in any way we can.

“We’re calling on the manufacturing industry and all those with relevant expertise who might be able to help to come together to help the country tackle this national crisis,” said a Downing Street spokesperson.

So, the critical question now is what will this mean for the future, once the COVID-19 crisis has abated?

An industrial strategy?

Although various governments over recent years have claimed to have industrial strategies these have rarely had a great deal of substance, neither have they been integrated or designed for the long term. In common with most UK Government initiatives they are driven by short-term political interest, not by a long-term strategic vision for the nation.

It is possible that the Coronavirus will change all this, acting as a catalyst – albeit an undesired one – that focuses the attention of politicians on the importance of the manufacturing sector to the UK economy.

In addition, with the disruption that’s taken place in supply chains that have traditionally extended across Europe to China and the Far East, we’re now seeing major European manufacturers and OEMs reassess the value of sourcing products and services closer to home. Plus, of course, there is likely to be a short-term politically expedient drive to promote UK business as a whole, following Brexit.

All-in-all, we may yet see the emergence of a cohesive and visionary industrial strategy for the UK – a strategy that enables growing and successful companies such as ours to plan and invest effectively for the long-term.

The risk of extended supply chains

In the meantime, the risks to extended supply chains remain, regardless of the way in which the current crisis unfolds.

As we’ve reported previously, there’s a compelling argument to engineer products such as injection mould tool sets in the UK. This can dramatically reduce lead times, to a few weeks for a complete mould tool set, to just days or less for injection mould tool inserts; it is also possible to reduce component costs while improving functionality.

For example, using the latest hybrid metal additive manufacturing technology, it is possible to engineer true conformal cooling solutions for injection mould tools, with complex curved paths, or to create innovative gas venting options. These innovations can make an important contribution to faster cycle times and even greater quality for injection moulded plastic parts.

Just as importantly, local production of critical components gives companies looking for high quality, competitively priced injection moulded parts and assemblies security and continuity of supply at a time when global market conditions are becoming increasingly unstable.

Reshoring your plastic injection moulding with OGM

Recent reports on the manufacturing sector, carried out by organisations that include Lloyds Bank and the University of Warwick, have highlighted the trend towards reshoring.   

37% of manufacturers surveyed by Lloyds Bank in its ‘Business in Britain’ report said that they plan to reshore their production processes, from Asia or Eastern Europe. Of these, 71% said that their goal was to improve quality; 44% to reduce costs and 41% to shorten their supply chains. 

These figures are supported by a separate report from Warwick University, ‘The Realities of Reshoring’. This revealed that companies that had either reshored production or chosen to expand UK based production in preference to offshoring had considerably improved their levels of overall performance. 

The same report also identified that companies with reshoring strategies had a greater focus on innovation, access to qualified staff, skills, technology and reducing supply chain risk. 

These findings are reflected in the field of plastic injection mould tool making, where the trend to offshore the manufacture of complete injection mould tool sets to the Far East has reversed in recent years. 

Dig beneath the surface of these statistics, however, and there’s more going on than at first appears. 

Let’s use OGM as an example. We’re a world-class plastic injection moulding company with diversified interests and customers around the world. Although all plastic injection moulding is carried out at our two production centres in the UK, and we have a dedicated injection tool making facility at our site in Oxford, we have also built strong relationships with specialised tool makers in China. 

Supporting your reshoring decision  

Our strategy is to use the most appropriate skills, knowledge and resources for each customer or project. Depending on factors such as lead times or technical complexity we may, therefore, draw upon resources from our UK team, our partners in China, or a combination of both. 

In 2018 we did, however, take the decision to reshore much of the specialised production of injection mould tool inserts back to the UK. It was this decision that drove our major investment in a unique hybrid metal additive manufacturing system, which combines precision laser sintering in a range of metals with an integrated CNC finishing unit, to produce fully finished inserts quickly and at highly competitive prices. 

These can then be combined with injection mould tool parts engineered at our UK facility or, if lead times are not an issue, with tool sets produced by our partners in China. 

This gives our customers the best of both worlds, with optimal flexibility in terms of cost, delivery and quality. 

The hybrid metal additive manufacturing system also gives us the ability to create an innovative injection mould tool inserts, which are not available elsewhere. Recent examples include inserts with true conformal cooling characteristics, capable of improving the quality of finished plastic injection moulded parts and the cycle rates of moulding machines.  A further example is the development of inserts that overcome the traditional problems of gas venting, again improving the quality of finished plastic parts. 

We believe that the future for UK manufacturing will be in the design and production of high-value products, together with a highly skilled workforce that can add even greater value to the products and services offered by our industrial businesses.   

This will depend on the ability of companies such as OGM to continue investing in the latest technologies and in the ongoing development of a highly skilled labour force. It will also require the adoption of strategies that recognise that success depends on combining the best-in-class resources for each customer, defined by factors such as quality, speed of delivery and cost, regardless of where in the world they may be found.