Mould maker: the trade in Tecmom's name
Nobody buys a mould to admire it. Yet every cap, bottle and pill container bears the exact imprint of the tool that formed it. The mould maker builds the tool that makes the parts: a quiet trade that Tecmom carries in its very name.
By Tecmom editorial team · 2 min read
Making the tool, not the part
Tecmom stands for Technologies Moules et Matrices, moulds and dies. The name does not talk about packaging: it talks about the tooling that makes packaging possible. It is a choice of trade. The company designs and builds the moulds for its own packaging, which is what lets it produce a part that is not yet in any catalogue. Hence its motto: "And when they do not exist yet, we create them."
At the heart of that choice is a trade: the mould maker.
What a mould maker does
An injection mould is an assembly of steel parts that must fit perfectly, withstand millions of closings and form an identical part at every cycle. The mould maker steps in at every stage of its life:
- reading the drawings of the mould and the part, and turning them into machining operations;
- machining the steel, on CNC machines, by milling, drilling, electrical discharge machining;
- fitting and assembling the components, so the two halves close with no play;
- polishing the cavities, whose surface will give the part its look;
- maintaining and repairing moulds in production, when wear starts to show on the parts.
A trade of precision and patience
The mould maker works at a scale the eye cannot see. A cap thread that grips too hard, flash on a sealing surface, a parting line that shows too much: every defect in the part points back to a detail in the steel. Polishing alone has its standard scales, from mirror finish to satin.
The trade also takes a kind of patience. A mould is designed to last: the sturdiest moulds are built, under the US SPI classification, for more than a million cycles. A good mould is a tool you look after for years.
Training in Morocco
In Morocco, the national vocational training office, OFPPT, publishes a brochure on its plastics processing courses, including a specialised technician track in machine and tooling maintenance, responsible for keeping all workshop equipment running. See also our job offers.
At Tecmom
Tecmom's workshops are equipped with CNC machines, which allows new products to be designed, made and developed with short lead times. See our expertise and the company.
When a cap closes well, nobody thanks the mould. Yet that is where everything happened: in a block of steel that a mould maker cut, fitted and polished, so that it would never get noticed.
Glossary
- Mould maker
- A professional who builds, fits and maintains moulds.
- Cavity
- The hollow in a mould that forms one part per cycle.
- Electrical discharge machining
- Machining by electrical sparks, for shapes a cutting tool cannot reach.
- Tooling
- The mould and its equipment, which make it possible to produce the part.