The Importance of Parting Line Maintenance in Rotational Molding
Parting Line maintenance of your rotational molds can definitely play a major role in downstream time, labor and scrap rates. The overall fit and finish of your molds parting lines dictate the outcome of your parts flash and in turn determine how much additional time it takes to trim a part and consider it to be first quality or not. Excessive flash leads finishing operators to spend more time trimming a part and having the ability to make it look acceptable to their customers. In addition, if multiple parts with excessive flash are coming off the machine at the same time, then one finish operator may not be enough to handle the work load and keep pace with the machine. So, in these cases proper preventative maintenance of the molds parting lines could actually save a company time and labor.
Excessive flash or offsets in the parting lines can also drive-up scrap rates. Sometimes flash and offsets can get to the point that a part cannot be viewed as first quality even after it has been trimmed based on the visual appearance of the part. Poor parting line fit can also cause blowholes or pinholes in the parts parting line areas which takes extra time to repair. Some parts could be deemed as scrap because the holes are too difficult to repair.
Hopefully we have shown you how proper mold parting line maintenance can save your company time and labor and reduce some of your scrap rates. The four steps below show how to create this maintenance program for your company:
- Believing that a mold maintenance program can truly help your company is the first key.
- Developing a routine mold maintenance program for your molds is the second key.
- Overall commitment to the program for the best interest of the company is third.
- Lastly, provide the proper tools to the molding operators and continuously educate them on how important mold care is.
Entec is here to help answer questions and work with you on developing a successful maintenance program for your company. Please feel free to reach out to us!
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