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12 MoldMaking Technology —— FEBRUARY 2018 Profile of steel with a hardness of 55RC than finish-mill on a piece of P20, but I do. To show how unusual that is, a representa- tive from a cutting tool manufacturer once said to me, "Mike, with my job, I get into a lot of high-end shops across the country. Do you realize that there are probably only five or six companies in the country that use the hard-milling pro- cess to the extreme that you do?" We see a big disconnect with tool shops when they look at part tolerance as compared to CPK's, especially in the medi- cal market where manufacturers are producing small parts. There is a big difference between the two, and that is huge to the medical people. For example, some people look at a CPK as a regular tolerance, but it is not. Just because that part has a 0.002-inch tolerance does not mean that the whole 0.002-inch tolerance is usable to make the capability study. Some might say, "Well, it's within tolerance," but it is not. Everything must balance out, and if one part is at the high end of the tolerance, but the other four parts are at the low end, the capability study is not working—the part will never make CPK. The key is to machine everything that can pos- sibly be machined in the mold so that everything is identical in the way that the plastic is delivered to the part and to the molding area. Please share an example of a job where hard milling was especially key to a customer's project. Because of its hard-milling expertise, Eden Tool Co. has been involved in several big and successful molding projects through- out the years. One of the most memorable was a project we did for Alcon in which we built all the single-cavity prototypes for a safety handle used on its ClearCut Safety Knives line. We received an award for our work on the project, but when it came to the production tools, they split the molds up between us and another shop. We got our job done quickly. Alcon found that the other shop struggled with their molds. They could not get the required tolerances and make the capability studies. The difference was that they burned everything, and we hard-milled everything. Our mold was more expensive because we laid it out differently and had more parts on it, but we did it so that we could machine everything and have more control over the critical-to-part areas. We wound up getting PO's for all the production molds. That was a pretty cool feeling. Are you looking to expand your hard-milling capabilities? Currently, we use a Creative Evolution HSD 500 VMC for our hard-milling work. It is a high-speed machining center with a maximum spindle speed of 30,000 rpm. But, it's not necessarily the machine itself that makes the differ- ence, though it's important. It's the pro- cess a shop puts around it. It's also in the control used and how a shop uses it. The control on our Creative machine is fast, and it was first available in the 1990s. It has been only in the past eight to 10 years that some other manufacturers' controls have caught up to it. It's that fast. At Eden Tool Co., we are in the process of evaluating new machining centers by Yasda and Makino. We also are looking at implementing the new laser measuring technology, which we believe would be a huge benefit to our customers because we can provide them with very accurate data measurements for each critical tool- ing component. Combining this with the proper documentation, we can replicate spare tooling several years down the road without having to fully revalidate the mold, given that the customer's ISO certification is written that way. Instead, we would only have to validate the mold steel or the components being used, which would save time and money. Additionally, we are looking to get into mold sampling, which we currently outsource. HAIMER Tool Dynamic Highest balancing quality – Innovatively simple yet light years ahead. Balancing Technology Measuring and Presetting Technology Shrinking Technology Tooling Technology www.haimer-usa.com