Kinetic Die Casting Company makes die casting parts from die casting molds that other die casting companies will not use. If you have a tool that “needs” replacement, call us and we can make your old die casting tool work in our die casting machines.

In 1995, a medical device manufacturing engineer brought over a die casting mold that he made overseas. He had saved over $20,000 making this tool overseas instead of a local die casting company. He had taken this mold to several other die casting companies to get a price for production parts. The tool was made of a material that was not tool steel. The material was soft. The size of the mold was half the size it should have been to produce the parts. The mold had slides that were “pinned” together with soft wire pins. And the mold base was damaged.

I took the die casting mold to a local die casting competitor, who I knew had experience running these types of jobs. He told me he would not touch the job because it would more likely be problems than rewards. He suggested I send the tool back to the customer and say “thanks but, no thanks”.

I decided to try to run this job because I did not really know what to expect. I was surprised at how many problems could occur. Every time a part stuck in the die, the cavity could be damaged by our die casting machine operator from using hardened removal tools. The mold base being under sized caused thermal transfer problems. The slides pulled apart because they stuck in the casting. The gate and runner system washed out because the steel was too soft to maintain the gates. The thermal problems and the gate washout caused porosity in the castings.

Over the years I have re-welded the parting line with H13 tool steel to harden the surfaces. I have replaced the wire pins that were used to hold the slides in the mold with hard steel pins. I have replaced or rather installed pins and bushings in the mold base. I have re-gated the tool three or four times. While making over 30,000 parts on this die casting mold, I have learned several valuable lessons.

Over the past 15 years, Kinetic Die Casting Company has taken on several more of these “problem die casting tool jobs”. I am happy to say that these jobs are only a challenge to my people. All I can say is if you have a difficult die casting mold or die casting tool, bring it to us for great quality parts.

Tags: Die Casting Company, Die Casting Process, die casting tooling, Manufacturing, Porosity

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 1:03 am and is filed under Die Casting Company. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.