1. Who owns the tooling? Who owns the hot runner control? "In this age of acquisitions, a lot of times the tooling goes from molder to molder and may not even be owned by the OEM, so you lose traceability on the tooling," Mulville says. In one mold move, when Mulville laid down the stipulations for the move, he included the HR control. However, the molder informed him that it owned the control, and Mulville's client had to make an offer for it. "You have to clear that up front," he says. "It's an unpleasant surprise to find this out at the last minute."
2. What condition is the tool in? (i.e. the age, number of cycles already run) Is the tool "capable"? This would seem like a no-brainer. "Yes, molders keep these records, but sometimes they don't like to part with that information," Mulville explains. "Sometimes you're invited to move molds because the molder can no longer be competitive and profitable on them. Invariably they're cooperative, but now and then I hear about hostile situations where there are collections implications. You need to evaluate the mold in advance with the existing molder, preferably while it's running.
"Short of that, retained parts are invaluable," he continues. "You can ascertain what condition the mold is in. Do the parts have known defects that have deviations or waivers to mold what is essentially a defective part, but is acceptable by the customer? If you know these deviations are good with the current molder, then there's no burden on the new molder to make a part that is otherwise impossible to make. If the mold has problems, is it reparable? The OEM doesn't usually know the condition of the tool. It's not so much about what people tell you—it's what they don't tell you that's important."
3. What type and size of press is currently being used? As the new molder, you need to do your homework to make sure you've got the available capacity. "Often they think they can run the mold in a similar press, or have several presses they believe will fit that mold, but then find out that they don't really have the right size press or can only run the mold in one press, which can cause a log-jam in the production schedule," explains Mulville.
4. What is the tiebar spacing and the knockout layout? Again, this is to ensure that you've got the right type of equipment that can handle the mold. Don't wait until the mold comes in the back door to find out whether or not it will fit your presses.
5. What environment does the mold/press run in? Providing the required environment for the type of parts, while not necessarily an ISO requirement, might be critical to the customer requirements. One molder might run an entire production floor as a "clean environment," while the new molder might have to install a cleanroom because his plant overall isn't a clean environment and would not be able to meet the minimum customer requirements.
6. What are all the recorded tool and part numbers? "We had a major audit for transferring molds as the result of an acquisition of business by a big corporation, and their list of acquired tools didn't match what I had in my database," says Mulville. "Often, the minute the tooling comes in the door, the new molder will assign its own in-house tooling and part numbers for control, which makes sense because you can't have everyone's numbers on your books. But make sure you reconcile the former tooling and part numbers with the new ones so there's no confusion about the molds."
7. Is there any peripheral equipment required? Are there any fixtures or special measuring devices needed? Do the parts require secondary operations such as hot stamping, ultrasonic welding, or assembly? If you don't have the equipment to do this, then you might need to bring in the equipment or find a vendor to supply these so you can fulfill parts orders.
8. Are there molding specifications with the mold? Often that information has gone missing or the former molder won't give it up. What grade of material is required? Who is the supplier? Are additives required? Colorants? And what are the let-down ratios?
9. What documentation exists to support change-out configurations? Where there's a family tool or a production tool that molds different configurations of the same part with separate cores and cavities, you need to have all the components, know how it's done, and what is required for these various configurations.
10. Is there full documentation on the mold? In many cases, Mulville notes, the molds have been moved so often that the drawings are gone or the documentation has been lost. That can create problems for the new molder.
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