Largest Amerimold Show Floor to Date; See Technology Display

Amerimold, The Event for Mold Manufacturing, closed on June 16th, 2016, at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, MI. The two-day tradeshow, technical conference and networking event featured more than 3,000 participants, representing every aspect of the plastic injection molding cycle.

The Amerimold exhibit hall was the largest ever and included 200 exhibitors displaying products and services used for designing, building, injection molding and maintaining molds.

Hasco’s booth reflected the increasing use of prototype and stack molds.

One highlight was the use of 3D printing in prototype mold building, shown in the company’s K3500 quick-change mold base with 3D-printed inserts from Stratasys

Components for stack molds were also featured.

Hasco's Z1545 gear housing and Z1547 rack unit are designed to enable simple, reproducible and inexpensive installation of these stack molds.

AST Technology, a sister company of Progressive Components, showcased a system that enables moldmakers to test mold cooling circuits to ensure they are working properly and efficiently. The System Cooling Test Rig complements the company’s System Cooling platform, which gives molders the ability to monitor water flow and temperature circuits inside the mold.

Attendees were also looking for off-the-shelf standard components and mold-ready components, alignment locks and plate sequence control items to help keep molds in production.

Progressive Components was solving headaches with its large lifter series. Assembly steps for the large lifter are: Step 1 set to lifter angle, Step 2 position the slide into place, and fasten lifter assembly into ejector plates, Step 3 attach cooling lines, Step 4 insert lifter rod into the mold and adjust length of the lifter rod by grinding the spacer and Step 5 fasten the lifter rod into position with lock nuts.

Standard lifters, cam actions and collapsible core solutions offered for molding undercuts were also discussed.

Pre-wired and pre-assembled with hydraulic valve gate actuators, the Unify hot runner manifold system saves time and effort, and provides leak-proof performance, according to Husky.

The Unify hot runner manifold system from Husky Injection Molding Systems is designed to be installed into a mold in one-step, without the need for preheating.

International Mold Steel introduced S-Star-A, a 420 stainless steel in the annealed condition that can be heat-treated to hardness of 50-53 HRC and will be stocked in plate form to 6" thick.

Edro Specialty Steels introduced two sister products to RoyAlloy, its low-carbon stainless holder steel. Edro 400 is a remelted, prehardened stainless insert steel, designed to be used at its supplied hardness of 40 HRC for applications requiring a combination of cleanliness, polishability, corrosion resistance and toughness. P1-FM is a non-stainless sister product that is supplied prehardened at 30 HRC and is designed to be used for applications requiring improved machinability and stability compared to traditional 4130/4140 grades.

James Brackman, VP of Marketing at Diehl Tool Steel says, “Amerimold was a great show. Traffic was noticeably heavier at our booth than in previous years, and there was great interest in our Accu-Square products.” Accu-Square tool steel saves tool, die and mold makers time by reducing or eliminating the need for further squaring of the blocks. It comes pre-squared on all six sides to a tolerance range of the customer’s choosing, according to the company.

Technology solutions from software and hot runners to mold material and inspection filled the exhibit hall.

PCS showcased everything from mold bases and mold components to hot runner solutions and molding supplies.

Kool Flow Manifold’s FB2 Series brass manifolds, which feature 1" NPT inlets and 3/8" NPT outlets, were on display and said to be well-suited for caustic, high-pH environments.

Thank you to our 2016 event sponsors!

Growth and innovation continue to highlight Amerimold exposition and technical conference.

Open Mind presented HyperMill 2016.2, which includes the Maxx Machining performance package.

Open Mind demonstrated a set of high-performance toolpath techniques for roughing, drilling (pocket-opening) and finishing.

WorkNC CAM software, from Vero Software, is automatic CNC software for surface or solid models in mold, die and tooling for two to five-axis CNC programming.

Autodesk detailed the world of 3D design with is portfolio of software solutions.

Autodesk staff discussed solutions to help at every stage of the product development process by streamlining workflows and collaboration between multidisciplinary teams.

ToolQuote job costing software from JDL Technical Services is designed to automate and organize quoting systems so moldmakers can obtain fast, accurate quotes quicker and more reliably than spreadsheet or database systems. And, a package was sold at the event!

Verisurf showcased its measurement inspection and reverse engineering 3D metrology software.

Amerimold 2016 also continued its annual traditions. The “Top 10 Reasons to be a Moldmaker” and accompanying t-shirt were unveiled at the Moldmaking Technology booth. Here, MMT's Editorial Director Christina Fuges and Senior Editor Cyndi Kustush work the MMT booth.

Now that this year’s Amerimold has passed, I am already looking forward to Amerimold 2017! The 2016 show closed with the announcement that Amerimold will be returning to Rosemont, IL’s Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, June 14-15, 2017.