One of the parts Mold-Tech has machined using the V33 demonstrates their hard milling capabilities. It is a single cavity mold for a medical part that has many features that would traditionally be EDMed and then polished. Now they are able to mill the entire cavity block - the parting line, the telescoping parting line, the shutoffs, the molding detail - with the V33.

Mold-Tech used 420 stainless steel (52-54 Rockwell) and held it to an accuracy of two ten-thousandths, with a surface finish they don't have to polish. They are using end mills down to 0.2 mm in diameter, or eight-thousandths.

Overall, Mold-Tech is seeing a difference with the V33 - they are doing things they would have not been capable of in the past. "There are a couple instances where we were able to design a mold completely around our hard milling capabilities," says Lee.

"On a medical device we were able to entirely hard mill the whole project, versus EDMing it. And we got a much more repeatable process. We can reproduce these parts very accurately with unattended machining. You put the block in, the program is loaded, the tooling is setup, you push go and it comes out finished on the other side.

"We were able to see a big time savings on that particular project. We did not have to purchase the graphite or do the burning. We didn't have to do polishing or jig grinding. We were able to machine it completely, building this project in nine weeks where traditionally that would have been a 12-14 week project."

"We got the job because we could make the nine-week delivery," says Lee. "The customer couldn't believe it could be done with as much detail as was on that part.

"We have also had several large automotive tools that are multi-cavity, with many actions in them - lifters, slides, etc. We've been able to incorporate the hard milling process into the components themselves where a lot of things typically would have had to be burned or EDMed. In many cases there is no polishing. It's been a big asset to be able to produce these molds in the timeline that we are given."

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