RKT handles mold transfers in two directions: customers supply us with their injection molds for us to mold their parts, or they commission us to build a mold that they use on their own injection molding machines for production.
International mold provisioning goes beyond the process steps described under Mold Transfer in our services and solutions. In international mold transfers, we can particularly demonstrate our high flexibility.
International mold provisioning is always about ensuring a stable process – for good reasons: If the mold we built in Roding was to not function adequately on the customer’s equipment abroad or fail after a short time, costly return shipments and rework would be required, or the deployment of an RKT team to resolve issues at the customer’s site. That is why it is of great importance to us to ensure smooth, long-term operation from the very start. This includes manufacturing a precision mold for the customer’s specific injection molding machine and optionally accompanying the implementation on-site or validating the process at our facility, which is then transferred to the customer’s machines. If needed, we conduct employee training abroad and provide instruction on mold maintenance and servicing at defined intervals on-site. For this purpose, we use a Mold Manual prepared in advance at RKT, internally also called the Pixi Book, which describes the mold maintenance procedures in detail.
International mold transfers have already taken us to the Czech Republic, Denmark, China, Israel, and India, among others. Every project in this area has very specific requirements. A few project examples provide insight into how international mold transfers can proceed:
RKT managed a project for agricultural irrigation in Israel, where every drop of water is precious and irrigation must therefore be as efficient as possible. Our customer established an extensive irrigation system consisting of tubing and so-called drippers. These plastic parts, which were ultrasonically welded into the tubing, allow water to be dispensed drop by drop. In this case, the drippers were designed so that contaminants in the water, such as small grains of sand, could not clog or block the drippers. A self-cleaning effect was achieved through turbulence, which flushed out the sand.
These special plastic parts required a highly precise, high-performance mold that produced parts in a cycle time of 2.3 seconds. The project started with a 4-cavity pre-production mold, which was subsequently scaled up. The final expansion stage was a 32-cavity mold that produced 32 components every 2.3 seconds, running 24/7 (approx. 1.1 million parts per day).
The actual production was originally planned in Israel. The process was designed and validated at RKT to ensure stable process operation in Israel. For this purpose, the customer provided all equipment including the injection molding machine at RKT. The Israeli project manager accompanied us through the entire commissioning and validation until all process steps were assured so that the project could be transferred to Israel. In the course of this, a high-speed camera was also set up to monitor and optimize the drop pattern of the plastic parts as they fell out of the mold.
For the first system and the first molds, we sent along an operator manual (Mold Manual / Pixi Book) as well as training and maintenance schedules; for the higher-cavity molds on additional systems, we were commissioned to also supervise the initial commissioning on-site and train the staff.
The investment in the high-performance molds including process validation as well as on-site commissioning and training paid off for the customer, as the molds produced more than 30 million shots (approx. 1 billion parts) without any mold failures or major maintenance. The customer’s original expectation was 12 to 15 million shots before a mold would need to be replaced. Thus, our molds produced more than twice as many parts as the customer had required.
After an Indian investor acquired a stake in the Israeli company, RKT was commissioned to transfer new dripper molds from Germany to India. The procedure was the same: provision of the injection molding machine and equipment in Germany, mold building and process validation at RKT, and finally transfer to India. There was close collaboration with the Indian staff, who initially sent a delegation to RKT in Roding to understand the process on-site. The production facility in India was prepared according to our specifications, where an expert team from RKT ultimately supported the commissioning. The local system along with peripherals and mold was shipped to India by container vessel.
The Indian staff were trained by us to independently perform mold maintenance and servicing at the defined intervals on-site in India.
In this case, the task was not only to build an injection mold and commission it on the system on-site, but to validate the entire injection molding process according to medical device industry requirements and hand it over completely. RKT designed/built eight molds and the customer from the medical device sector provided three injection molding machines along with peripherals at our facility. The injection molding process for these molds was defined and validated using a DoE to ensure production within a stable process window. This process window informs the operators within which molding parameters they may operate to produce dimensionally accurate parts. RKT has been applying this procedure internally for approximately 15 years. We ultimately handed over this process, validated in accordance with medical device requirements, to the customer so they could produce without disruptions in the Czech Republic.
For a customer in the pharmaceutical sector, we produce medical device components by injection molding. The molds were supplied by the customer and built in his home country of Denmark. What made this project special: We accompanied the Danish mold makers during mold design and commissioning as well as during process validation, in order to then optimally transfer the process to our injection molding machines procured for series production. During this transfer, we established a new process method, the Batch Release. Through extensive sensor technology, the recording of all process parameters, and the definition of specified tolerance ranges, consistent parts are produced within the given specification. Among other things, a pressure transducer from Kistler was used during validation to record the cavity pressure curve in the mold, in order to subsequently use this data for defining the process window. Regular sample collection and dimensional inspection as part of quality assurance is no longer necessary. The batch (injection molding production with a quantity of e.g. 100,000 parts) can be released based on the digitized documentation of the respective production parameters within the specified process and equipment tolerance limits. A detailed description of this method can be found here.
If you are looking to establish high-quality injection molding production at international locations, do not hesitate to commission mold building, process definition, and validation in Germany. It is well worth having RKT design/build a high-precision mold and having our injection molding experts sample it and validate the entire process. Upon request, we also handle the selection and procurement of the appropriate injection molding machines including necessary peripherals and automation, as well as the coordinated transfer of production abroad. We then transfer the process to your international site, where it runs stably and reliably.
Stefan Preis
Head of Project Business
S.Preis@rkt.de
