From Design to Product

Brett Drvol works on designing the products and molds used here at Dimatic. Since starting his career at Dimatic nearly 10 years ago, Dimatic’s lead designer, Brett Drvol, has encountered hundreds of design projects and has developed a proven method for designing high quality and easily manufactured molds and dies.  Brett’s in-depth knowledge of molds not only helps our toolroom work through a build, but can also save our customers time and money by addressing potential issues early on in the design process rather than finding the issues later on.

            The first step in a mold design is to see if the part design is “moldable”, meaning can we even make it using the injection molding process. Depending on the size and complexity of the part, the number of cavities, and other aspects that need to be included, a mold design usually takes about 10-15 hours spread out over a week or two. Once the mold is designed, another 5-10 hours are required to create the drawing for the tool room in order to actually create the mold. A more difficult or complex part usually takes about 20-30 hours of design, followed by 10-20 to complete the drawings.

            Molds have different components including: cavities; water lines; parting lines; and parting surfaces. A cavity is an open space where the plastic material will fill in order to create the part, just like getting a filling at the dentist. In the design of the mold are parting lines and parting surfaces that allow the part to be split into 2 halves (A and B) inside the mold. This allows the part to be molded and ejected out after the part is complete. The parting line, created first, is based on the edge of the part model, while the parting surface is created by the parting line and extends out to the edges of the mold base.

            Water lines are another important component of a mold. Just like it sounds, these run water through the steel mold plates and steel blocks so the part can cool faster, shortening the machine cycle, and allowing it to be handled by a machine operator once it comes out of the mold.

            When things get cold, they shrink, and plastic is no exception. When injected into the mold, the melted plastic is hundreds of degrees in temperature and drops to less than 100 in seconds in order to handle the part after the molding process is finished.

Depending on the material, the part quickly shrinks a specific amount. Material suppliers provide us with spec sheets providing how much the part will shrink inch-per-inch.  Accounting for this shrinkage is a critical step in the design process to ensure that the finished part will fit the dimensions given by the customer. 

Summer of Social Media

This past spring, Dimatic was contacted by the Nebraska Department of Labor, who gave us information about a program called Facebook Career Connections.  After a little more research, we decided to move forward to see if a stronger online and social media presence would prove beneficial to our sales, reputation, reach, and local awareness.

            We met and interviewed with Facebook Fellow Rachael Vacanti, and were quickly impressed with the extent of research she had done prior to our interview, not only learning about our company, but also in already formulating ideas in working with us. We figured if she put that much hard work into the interview, she’d be the type of person willing to put in the work to learn the industry enough to produce relevant, quality content.

            Her initiative and willingness to put in the work has paid off, as she quickly learned more about Dimatic and our industry in a short time, while producing good ideas even remotely, coming up with nearly a year’s worth of blog post ideas after only 2 weeks.

            Rachael’s strength of organization and communicating her ideas, expectations, needs, and progress has been key for her. The biggest time this was shown was in the first few weeks as she divided her time between truly grasping the processes at Dimatic, our customer base, and industry while trying to make progress on the online and social media side to help set us up for success when we start posting her content. This has mostly involved her creating goals in Google Analytics, completing keyword and competition analysis, researching to determine our target audience, and studying the types of content that would prove most effective.

            For Rachael, it was a little bit of a different story, as she got into Facebook Career Connections just barely before the deadline. Dimatic was the first to reach out of her employer matches, and by 10:00 AM, had an interview set for 3:30 that same afternoon. This gave her about 4 ½ hours to research and get to know Dimatic, and another half hour to physically and mentally prep for her first virtual interview. When she came up for lunch, her mom laughed and said she was really working from home, as she was dressed up on top, but still wearing her sweatpants and slippers.

            While Rachael liked most of her employer matches, she wasn’t sure about Dimatic. She didn’t quite click with them, had no business-to-business marketing experience, and only knew snippets about engineering and manufacturing. But she was up for the challenge, asking good questions in her interview, showing initiative and sharing ideas. Three and a half weeks later, Rachael was paired with Dimatic Die & Tool. Despite being last on her list of rankings, her interview had her realizing that Dimatic wouldn’t be that bad of a match - she had just clicked with the other employers more.

            After a few emails with Ryan Drvol, an hour safety training video, introductory paperwork,  getting a copy of the employee handbook, and going over the summer overview, Ryan gave her a tour of the office introducing her to everyone. Then Rachael got a walking/talking overview of the plant, departments, machines, and processes. After crashing  due to information overload, she hit the ground running the next day, diving into a competition analysis, as well as looking at Dimatic’s website, keywords, and social media presence including Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

            It took Rachael a few weeks to get acclimated. While she learned about Dimatic, their processes, products, and customers quickly, she struggled with customer relations and determining an exact target audience and keywords for Dimatic. The hardest part was a little bit of miscommunication between Rachael and Dimatic in figuring out what exactly was being wanted or expected. Once a plan was refined about 2-3 weeks in, everything became much clearer on both sides and content began to emerge at a rapid rate.

            What’s been interesting for Rachael at Dimatic was her keen interest in the company. Not only was she fascinated that we were still family-owned and keeping up with major competitors, but how awed she was at seeing the processes we complete on a daily basis. She clearly enjoys not only seeing the parts being developed, but watching the process being completed and learning how the processes are completed.

In her last few weeks of the Program, Rachael has continued working hard to post ads, finalize blog posts, and create a content calendar.  But Rachael doesn’t really care about what she gets DONE here with us at Dimatic. To her, it’s what she can leave WITH us. Coming into this, she knew it was only part-time, and couldn’t get everything done on the summer overview we provided.  Rachael’s goal is to leave us with a content calendar with content we can consistently post, as she’s hoping that will get more people seeing our page. She’s left us a lot - drafts of website updates, definitions of keyword and traffic terms, a table of where to find things between Google and Squarespace, custom reports, goals, and social media tips and practices. We can’t wait to start seeing a return on investment on her posts and content.

Annual Plant Safety Meeting

At Dimatic, safety is a top priority, and this can be seen throughout our company.  While we work hard on a daily basis to maintain a safe environment for all employees and visitors, we believe that safety is an area that we must continually improve upon .  Dimatic has several programs in place to ensure we are appropriately preventing accidents while also ensuring our employees can all respond in case an emergency would arise.  These programs range from Hazardous Communications and SDS (Safety Data Sheet) Procedures to Emergency Evacuation Procedures, Forklift Safety, and Lockout-Tag out Procedures.  Our safety committee meets on a recurring basis to review these procedures, respond to employee requests, and help ensure all employees can work in a safe environment.   

Last week, we held a company-wide gathering for our annual plant safety meeting.  At this event, Dimatic leadership reviewed the different procedures we have in place, discussed best practices, answered questions, and took recommendations for improving our safety programs.  Following this gathering, all employees were quizzed over the policies and the employees receiving the highest scores were awarded with gift cards. 

Dimatic employees have shown their dedication to a safe working environment by working 687 straight days without a lost time accident.  We are well on the way to topping our previous record of 2093 days.  By continually reviewing our safety policies and ensuring all employees are properly educated, Dimatic is dedicated to providing all employees with a safe environment.

Tracking Production: Bear Tracker

Operating 3 shifts and maintaining a working plant 24 hours a day comes with a wide range of challenges.  Not only must staff be maintained to manage machinery and protect quality, but tracking the production becomes a challenge when working with 20 different injection molding machines.  For years, Dimatic has used a proprietary custom-made system to help track its production, reduce down-time, perform regular maintenance and quickly address issues that arise.

This system, titled “Bear Tracker”, uses sensors placed on each machine to track cycle time, downtime, startups, and shut downs.  Using the projected cycle time limits and real-time tracking, Dimatic can quickly and easily see what how machines and operators are doing, as well as receive live cost analysis on their jobs. 

In addition, this Bear Tracker system saves historical data so that Dimatic can maintain a record of efficiency and best evaluate how changes effect the process.  Dimatic regularly uses this data to improve their own processes, improve efficiency, and eliminate scrap.

Recently, Dimatic improved their system further by linking this Bear Tracker system with their warehouse inventory software to help automate their inventory tracking system. With this improvement, parts are flawlessly tracked from machine to warehouse to shipment, with a digital footprint throughout the process.

Dimatic’s Bear Tracker system gives them a distinct edge against competing injection molders as it allows us to track our machines in real-time, quickly respond to issues that arise, improve efficiency, keep customers aware of production status, and automate our production.

Recycling/Regrind

In a world where environmental impact has become a house-hold topic, manufacturing companies must take it upon themselves to help reduce their waste and the impact on our planet.  By utilizing regrind within the injection molding process, Dimatic has been eliminating scrap for decades.

Within the injection molding process, there is a potential for a significant amount of waste.  The two most common types of waste are through scrapped parts and molded runners.  Parts can be scrapped for many reasons, however, out of tolerance or warped parts are the most common cause.  Cold runner molds will have scrap in the form of runners, which are the left-over plastic “tunnels” by which the melted plastic is fed into the mold cavity.  Parts typically need to be trimmed from the runners.

Dimatic has been recycling this “scrapped” material by grinding down the scrap parts and runners.  Once these have been ground down to a pellet size, they are mixed in with virgin material in the proper ratios to continue making new parts.  By recycling the material in this manner, Dimatic is able to have virtually zero waste product in our process.

By understanding our responsibility to maintain resources, Dimatic has been running our injection molding operation virtually waste-free for years by recycling and regrinding our runners and scrapped parts.

Warehouse Advantages

At Dimatic, we pride ourselves in providing various services to our customers in order to help them be successful.  One such way we have done this is through the use of our warehouse.  By utilizing our 20,000 square foot warehouse, we are able to provide several advantages to our customers that can help them save money, hit deadlines, and quickly respond to the fluctuating needs of everyday business.

By manufacturing products in one lot and storing them in our warehouse, we are able to save customers money during production by reducing set-up cost, and providing parts as they are needed.  In addition, customers can rest easy knowing their products will be safely stored in our warehouse, which is equipped with a security system and loaded sprinklers. 

We offer blanket orders, kan-ban, and forecast commitments, all to fit the needs of those we work with.  We are able to provide special drop-shipments from our warehouse as well as professional packaging. 

If you have any questions about how warehousing your parts can be beneficial to your company or would like to see our facility, please contact us.  We would love to hear from you!

Use our warehouse and you can say goodbye to lead times on last-minutes jobs and say hello to cost savings and just-in-time delivery.  Whether you have 10 parts, or 1,000,000, our warehouse helps provide you with a solution to save money, hit deadlines, and respond to the demands of modern business.

Multi-Process Jobs

At Dimatic, we work on a vast array of project, many of which utilize more than one of our manufacturing capabilities.  Once such project was a timing belt pulley we recently built for a client.  This small, high precision part required work within our molding, tooling, and assembly departments. 

After designing and building the mold in-house, the first process in creating this part is a process called over-molding.  In this injection molding process, a single part is created from two or more materials.  The first material, in this case the aluminum hub, is partially covered during the injection molding process with the injected plastic.  For this pulley, an aluminum hub is placed into the mold before a cycle is ran.  After the cycle, in which a glass-filled polycarbonate fills the remaining cavity within the mold, a single part falls out which is the combination of the plastic and aluminum.

Following molding, the part is taken into our assembly area where it is drilled and tapped in order to add set-screws to the part.

Finally, the part goes through a process called “Sonic Welding”.  This is a process, commonly used for welding together plastics, which uses high-frequency mechanical motion to generate heat to join together two thermoplastics.   This process forms a molecular bond between parts.  In regards to the pulley, sonic welding is done to weld the flange onto the body of the pulley and finish the part.

By having the capabilities to complete all of these steps in-house, we were able to save our client money and time while providing them with high quality parts to fit their needs. Dimatic’s versatility and diverse abilities met the challenge of this project and provided a high-quality part to its client.

Bracket In-Die Tapping

Dimatic was presented with a challenge by a Fortune 500 company to produce large monthly quantities of a .040” thick galvanized steel bracket that also requires two threaded holes.  The part design appears to suggest a stamping/forming operation, followed by tapping operations for the #6-32 threaded holes.  The print is shown here:

Dimatic designed and built a progressive die to pierce the five holes, cut the outside contour and additionally tap the two holes.  All of this is done in a single stroke of the punch press, and includes two in-die tapping heads to complete the threaded holes. 

This efficient use of design, tooling and labor saves costs, improves production efficiency and provides consistent quality through the entire process.  Dimatic’s design, tooling and production team has scored again! 

Molded Plastic Spiral

Dimatic was requested to help design and produce plastic parts of a very unique shape by a customer.  The part involves a spiral design with holes through the part which is used in a mixing operation.  It was to be molded from a food grade plastic in several colors.  After considering the customer’s requirements and product application, a final part was designed using Dimatic’s Pro-Engineer* solid modeling software to maximize the efficiency of the part’s mixing capability as well as to produce a part that is consistently injection moldable.    The part desgin is shown here:

Dimatic combined the use of 3-D printed samples, along with viewing 3-D models to work with the customer to design the finished part.  Dimatic then designed and built a two cavity mold for the job.  The HDPE part’s intricate shape requires mechanical cams to core out the center section and complete match-offs on the contoured walls.   Using the 3-d design database and extensive use of CNC (Computer numerically controlled) Milling, EDM (Electrical discharge machining) and Wire EDM technologies, Dimatic’s designers and toolmakers made the product happen.  The mold was built with top quality materials and standards and some of the electrodes and components are shown here:

Our molding production department produces the parts in many colors and completes the product through a packaging operation which includes a shrink wrapped clear tube.  See sample parts below:

Through excellent communication with the customer on the part’s requirements and the expert use of high-tech design tools, Dimatic met the challenge of this project and brought quality through the entire process including end user packaging.  Dimatic’s design, tooling and production team has scored again!