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Rotary Swaging 18 MoldMaking Technology —— JANUARY 2016 The rotary swaging machine rests on a 4-foot-thick pad of concrete to maintain accuracy and alignment. George Hastick, who's been operating the machine for 20 years, listens for changes in the sound of the process to determine when to pull the blank and check if forming is complete. by Matthew Danford A lthough doing something that no one else can is widely regarded as a path to success for any business, the truly unique are few and far between. Cavaform International, a mold manufacturer in St. Petersburg, Florida, counts itself as a member of that rare company. "Cavaform" is a verb, too, says company President David Massie, explaining that the company takes its name from a process that creates mold cavities to ±0.0002-inch tolerances and 4-micron surface finishes with vir- tually perfect repeatability and very little polishing. The Cavaforming process can be performed only on one piece of equipment: a 40-foot-long, 40-ton behemoth with capabilities that belie its primitive appearance and relatively easy operation. Indeed, a design dating from an era before CNC is actually an asset for the purposes of this machine, which employs a rotary hammer- ing action to force an annealed steel tube around a hardened man- drel to impart the specified inner diameter (ID) geometry. Known as rotary swaging, this cold-forming process isn't unusual, Massie says. However, the machine itself certainly is, as is the way the process is being applied. In fact, to his knowledge, Cavaform is the only company in the world that swages plastic injection mold cavities. Pursuing Perfection with Cold-Formed Cavities Yet, Massie emphasizes that the Cavaforming process has shaped more than just metal during the past four decades. It's shaped the identity of this business as well. In addition to driv- ing growth from niche service provider to full-fledged mold manufacturer, the process has been the primary catalyst for the shop's stringent quality standards, even for work that never sees the machine. A Process Shapes a Shop In fact, most of the shop's work never sees the machine, which is used for only about 25 percent of all jobs. Despite the processes' advantages, Massie says he's confident that the 75-employee company would be highly competitive in design- ing, building, maintaining and repairing molds even if it were to somehow lose the rotary swaging machine. Other resources on the 32,000-square-foot shop floor include robot-fed, high- A unique process for creating mirror-finish, tubular insert IDs has broken bottlenecks and driven this moldmaker to expand capabilities and raise quality standards.