Up Close and Personal With Precision Molds and Molding

MoldMaking Conference attendees could enhance their experience by registering for an AMBA Facility Tour at Dynamic Group one day before the conference began. Participants saw firsthand how the company has leveraged its competitive advantage in plastics processing and mold manufacturing.

Dynamic Group is a precision injection mold builder and a plastic injection molder. The company is housed in 2 locations 11 miles apart. The tooling facility is 16,500 sq ft with 40 employees, including 6 apprentices specializing in tight-tolerance, high-volume production single and multi-cavity tooling – primarily Class 101 & 102 molds, but they also build Class 103 or 104 molds as part of prototype-to-production programs. The injection molding facility is 23,500 sq ft with 60 employees. It's ISO13485-certified and primarily focused on molding and assembling medical devices and parts requiring cleanliness, handling and traceability.

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Tour Highlights

Tooling facility

• Manufacturing processes focused on efficiency, accuracy and repeatability
• Well-organized/managed workflow
• Detailed planning and scheduling system
• High-level engineering and documentation processes designed to generate repeatable/interchangeable results

Molding Facility

• Clean molding floor
• Class 7 cleanroom and Class 8 cleanroom enclosures
• High-mix/low-med volume products
• Many value-added offerings (IPA cleaning, laser marking, annealing, ultrasonic welding, assembly, testing, etc.)
• In-house tooling maintenance and repair shop

Key Tour Takeaways

• Collaborative tool design engineering
• Technically knowledgeable project management
• Five-axis and standard three-axis CNC milling (soft/hard steel, carbon/copper)
• Sinker and wire EDM
• In-house polishing
• Skilled toolmakers with decades of experience
• Experienced tool design and planning team that works with customers to develop the best tool to serve their needs, then meticulously plans and schedules the program to provide OTD, quality, and consistency.
• A submersible rotary index in wire EDMs to manufacture a low volume of small precision core pins instead of outsourcing to a grinding shop.
• A Starret vision system improves the consistency and accuracy of tooling component inspection.
• Growing molding business shifts the tooling team's focus to maintenance, repair and replacement tooling from new tooling programs.
• Increased molding engineering team to help identify required tooling support and facilitate/manage customer change requests.
• Expanded use of ERP system (IQMS) to include MRO (maintenance/repair/overhaul) to manage and improve efficiency with the ever-increasing demand on tooling resources.
• Increased workforce development activities to improve retention and increase new hire opportunities.

Thank you to the AMBA Tour Sponsors: Crystallume, Incoe, PCS, Progressive Components,Punch Industry USA and Wipfli.