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Does anyone think tool/mold repair can be fully automated for injection molding? How is it currently done? Do you send it back to China/Mexico for repair?

So I'm getting a small production run of 1,000 units done via CraftCloud, it's a number of items that have an M5x0.8 thread in them.

They are essentially a unique nut that works with another product I've developed as part of an ecosystem I've made for a storage solution.

Actual end goal is that part of the solution will be able to be 3D printed at home similar to Gridfinity, so people can do things themselves, but also I'll manufacture parts for people that don't have access to 3D printers,

Now my cost will work out to be around $3.90/unit delivered, which is 100% fine by me for this.

Now I've successfully printed as small as M8x1.25 on FDM, but never done SLS.

Presumably, like FDM, I'll need to chase every thread that comes in?

Or would I be better off getting them all made with a 4.2mm hole and tapping them all from scratch? Which given the small quantity, I'll probably just set aside a weekend and tap them all by hand.

The alternative is that for about $0.50 a unit less, I get them made in ASA with a 6mm hole and stick an M5 heatsert in them, but then I need to stick 1,000 heatserts in.

I have been software engineer in the tech space for the last 2 decades. Pandemic. Economy. yada yada yada. I am no longer a software engineer.

I'm ready to explore other industries. Manufacturing really piques my interest.

I have a passing knowledge and hobby experience with electrical and pcb concepts (Arduino phase a while back) I don't have much exp but I worked at a fuji film processing where eventually I ended up maintaining and often fixing the bespoke machines made for the various steps in the processing. I liked that work quite a bit, and I like the idea of maybe one day working in that bespoke automation industry. Is that that its called?

For the time being anyways I'm fine with some kind of entry level grunt work is usually available to get into the industry (assembly line, w/e)

But I'm curious how mfg companies are structured and perhaps where my software experience could be applied in this space.

What are some certifications or courses I could start looking into? I really don't know much here, thanks for reading all that

My main interest is in the beverage industry. Looking for books that can help me learn about manufacturing beverages.

How do you guys currently deal with online meetings. If you have them online, how often does it happen for you?. Do you recommend any tools for productivity in that area?

Hello, I want to have a product that uses a tag made out of the same material as this one. Does anyone know what type of material it is? And where can I get one custom sized and printed? Thanks in Advance!

P.S. This is off of a pillow pet.

https://preview.redd.it/rf00ayk1gx3e1.jpg?width=1989&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=812cb64e63b53691b3ec7716f6d98d02a5a4cf2a

I’m looking to do this as cheaply as possible, but cannot find an Alibaba manufacturer that says that they use Gildan blanks.

I am wondering how much the price for injection molding for a smart thermometer would be? I don't think the mold should be super complicated, but this is my first time doing this so not too sure. Any estimates on how much such a mold could cost would be greatly appreciated. Here's an example product. Thanks.

I am trying to automate a lot of this and here is why. I usually start my day by sifting through emails, pulling quote details from PDFs, and manually entering them into our ERP system. I then send out RFQs to suppliers and manage responses. Usually at the end of my day I reconcile invoices with PO's and goods receipt notes (this is not every day). Does anyone else has to deal with admin like this, it takes up a lot of my time or am I just slow at my job. Would love to hear from you!

I'm a quality engineer in a facility that does lots of manual assembly. Sometimes we get off the shelf parts from suppliers that have a small defect. A screw might be loose or a spring tab might be in the wrong place. The rework is well within our assemblers abilities to do and the hazards are low.

I believe that we should fix these on the rare occasion we discover them instead of returning to the supplier. These fixes take about 5 minutes to do but a supplier return takes 4 hours to process and disrupts our inventory. And some of these off the shelf parts can't be returned for various reasons. The obvious answer is to prevent them from happening, but prevention is more onerous than reworking the part on the rare occasion it's defective.

Safety says we aren't allowed to rework or modify off the shelf parts unless a professional engineer stamps the procedure due to liability risks. Our assemblers also expect every part coming in to be perfect and refuse to fix non-comformances because they claim it isn't their job. Is this correct and normal in a manufacturing environment?

I'm in Alberta (Canada), in a plant of 10 people. Non-union.

The orders come down And the steel comes in Fire up your saw and let it spin Flip the switch let the coolent rain Its a hell of a way to earn your pay same people same parts every day but you'll make some friends along the way Youll make parts and money pains and aches You'll get into fights and give firm handshakes You'll walk the soles right off your shoes Concretes a bitch but a bitch aint you You don't even need a high school diploma to fill your soul with the aroma Of welding fumes and a tumbler juice You get scars and storys fun and fear You'll get old farts talking till you wish you had no ears No matter what you cant get get back time so make the most of your years on the line Because even though we hate it there is something in our soul we are men of steel thats how we roll

With all this talk about tariff wars coming up, any of you guys decided to order spare parts/backup parts before any of the prices increase? How are you guys handling spare parts for your plants? I've already seen the prices increase a lot over the last few years for some critical parts for our machines and it's been such a nightmare dealing with dealers and distributors.

I'm in the process of prototyping a product and hoping to do so as cheaply as possible. Something like the below product would be really useful except ideally I would like it even smaller e.g. inner diameter of the tubing would be 5 mm. I would also ideally take something that had even thinner plastic walls (e.g. 0.5 mm to 1 mm).

https://www.uline.ca/Product/Detail/S-3520/Poly-Tubing/2-Mil-Poly-Tubing-Roll-1-x-1500?pricode=YD364&gadtype=pla&id=S-3520&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD2OYMa3dqaI8aJpaDeH0QkAMdjPf&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2M77v5j9iQMVAiitBh0bIgI6EAQYBCABEgIgQvD_BwE

Anyone know where I could get something like that? Thanks 🙏

Hi I produce PET bottle from a preform. currently my machines go throughan absurd amount of the seal , 1 seal avg about 25,000 ~ 30,000 rounds of pushing down on the bottle's mouth.

It wasn't always like this. Back then it was like 40x more durable. but I was not in charge of overseering it for 2 years. despite the same supplier the quality seem to be dramatically droped. Sourcing from other local producer and the pricing are really expensive.

So I thought maybe I should cast it myself from PU. unfortnately my country doesn't have any supplier that would sell a small amount of PU. I could order the moq if I know exactly which grade/specification I need , which I don't.

Dear community!

I need some advices for sharing operator instructions for certain manual process step. I would like to avoid printing the instruction and gluing it to the wall. I want display. And here I need some experience. How do you do it? Via monitor, TV or something else? What is the best practice here?

I'm the IT admin at discrete manufacturing company, and the boss needs me to setup Seagull's BarTender software for serialization & labeling, and activate printing of said labels from a barcode scanner.

Does anyone have experience with BarTender (potentially using Print Station) with barcode scanners?

We basically want an operator to be able to scan a serialized barcode (printed manually from BarTender and applied to items on the assembly line), and have that result in other labels being printed from other BarTender documents. I have looked at using their Print Station software for this, but it does not seem to respond to keyboard/barcode input, only mouse/touch. I also considered testing software, like Katalon Studio to try and automate it, but haven't got far yet.

Anyone have any tips they could share?

There are tenders being published by the Canadian government and same with the US government. How much red tape is there if we want to pursue this as a manufacturer in Canada. Thanks for your help. Asking for a friend.

Hello everyone, not sure this is the place to ask this but… I’m looking to get a metal piece made. Roughly the size of a toddlers hand. And actually the shape of a hand also. It’s going to go on a piece of equipment I use for work. I have no idea what the best way to get these made would be. It’s going to have fingers sticking up with a little detail so I’m guessing machining wouldn’t be the best option? I am not knowledgable in any of this at all. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it! Thanks.

Hello all.

We are making some parts with very high cyclical loading and are researching some ways we can improve the process to reduce fatigue failure from the welded joints at high stress areas.

The first thing we looked at was making sure not to stop the weld in the high stress area and go on past to avoid a crater hole at the end of the weld that could start a crack.

The next was grinding the toes of the weld with a bullnose carbide die grinder to grind out microcracks at the weld toes and leave a 6mm rad transition again only in these areas with high stress.

Are we on the right track there is very little information on how to do this correctly.

Thanks for any input or help.

Hi, first time posting here; I hope this is the right place to discuss.

I’m working on project that requires a roughly 3” diameter steel part to be finished with a matte black surface, ideally with some corrosion resistance. Here’s the tricky part, it is being over molded with PA6GF30 and requires high tolerance. I’m trying to evaluate ALL options. Annual qty is roughly 20,000 pcs. Here is where we are with options so far:

Black oxide - post treatment oil is apparently incompatible with the over mold process.

Powder coat - thickness control for both over molding and final product is out of spec

E-coat - my preferred option, but too shiny for the customers’ ID requirements.

Spray paint - not ideal but what we’re feeling we might need to fall back on

PVD - exploring this option with our vendor now. Afraid cost is not viable, though.

Can anyone recommend any other options? Thanks in advance for any discussion!

Can anyone help me source 38/400 white flip top caps within North America? Our current supplier is saying 4-6 weeks but we would need within 14 days at most to the Greater Toronto Area. Any help is appreciated.

Hello, im new to manufacturing as a whole and ive been interested for a while. i have a few questions
Where do you learn? Do you make the machines yourself? if you dont where do you buy them? where do you get raw materials? if you don't have any capital, or very small capital (few hundred dollars), is it possible to start?

i saw a chinese video making a machine that dehulls sunflower seeds and i thought it might be a good place to start, but i was wondering if its efficient and a good way to make money (im not in this for money, initially, but i dont want to lose money either)

thanks in advance

Hello,

I was wondering how a lot of you guys are managing all the day to day operations data. I read that many still are using paper based, however, my question is if we fill out multiple papers with numbers, how does one actually find errors or analyze this data? Unless, they are all exported electronically or looked over manually somehow?

Thanks

I'm making a small part - it's essentially a washer with a pin sticking out radially, cut from 1mm sheet. The pin is also 1mm in width, and I'd like to make it closer to round. Can I cut a chamfer into the pin using stamping? Could I do this to cut off all 4 corners of the pin to form an octogon? (It would be a 45 deg chamfer of about 0.29-0.30mm)

Edit: the part is 316SS

Hi all, I'm evaluating CMMS platforms (MaintainX, Limble, and UpKeep) for a team of 150 users. Pricing transparency is a bit tricky with these providers, so I wanted to ask: what’s the lowest monthly or annual rate per user you’ve negotiated with these platforms? Any advice on features worth paying for or tips for negotiating would also be appreciated! Thanks in advance!