Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019 - 32

Plastics industry awards 2019

supplier Partnership: toolmaker

rest easy

(From left) Christopher Whitlam, general manager at Hasco Internorm, Duncan
and Caroline Faulkner, directors at Faulkner Moulds, and Shaun Williamson

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eople speak in hushed tones about
the 'dark art' of plastic moulding, but
there wouldn't be much material
forming were it not for the appropriate
tooling.
From mould cavities through to cooling channels, material gates to hot runners, the intricacy of these components is
something to behold - they're machined
metal that could qualify as art.
But behind that engineering expertise
there are some basic good ideas. That's
the story behind the winner of this year's
PIA Supplier Partnership: Toolmaker
award, Faulkner Mould. Caroline Faulkner,
company director, offered more details.
"A number of tool makers were asked
to quote on this project," she explained.
"Glen Wells, general manager at St Davids
Assemblies, said he chose us for this project because he 'felt sure [we] knew what
we were doing'. In the end, he just had a
good feeling about us."
The project in question was to develop new tooling for production of the Snoreeze anti-snoring device. The company
had been manufacturing the anti-snore
product using two individual overmoulding tools, but wanted to move to a single,
twin-shot alternative to help increase production volumes.
The ingenuity behind the solution developed by Halifax-based Faulkner resulted in them being shortlisted - and ultimately winning - the toolmaker award.
Faulkner offered some more details:
"Twin-shot moulding, particularly for a
medical device, requires adherence to

extremely tight tolerances. The complex
tool was fully hardened, with a fixed half
ejection system operated by hydraulic cylinders. There's a four-drop open system
for the first shot and an eight-drop valve
gate system for the second shot, plus interlocks and pressure pads."
The tooling had to be guaranteed
for 1 million cycles, while having no mismatch or flash, and no crush damage to
the component.
Development of the tool further required a perfect line split, which was
checked on the company's coordinate
measurement machine. This served to
prove out the accuracy of Faulkner's
machining technology, including development of shut-off faces and split lines,
which eliminated the manual part fitting
process - also a requirement of the
brief.
When it came to assembling the tool
towards the end of the project, Caroline
Faulkner said the bed-off went as expected, requiring no fitting beyond grinding
the pressure pads to the required thickness in order to bring both halves of the
split line together.
At completion, Wells commented:
"I was very impressed with the detail
Faulkner Moulds went into during the design process. The type of questions they
asked reassured me they were knowledgeable about what they were doing.
Faulkner Moulds' thoroughness in terms
of technical detail has really stood out."
High praise indeed for this year's award
winner.

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Plastics & Rubber World - November/December 2019

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