Mega-Cell: Moldmaking Automation

At the heart of the project is a desire to move away from a traditionally customized approach to moldmaking, and toward a level of complete automation that raises the bar on accuracy, repeatability and control. “A manufacturing unit cannot effectively process the same thing being done multiple ways—although this is the norm for moldmaking as we all learned it,” Graham explains. “Each craftsman would create an end product by working on it in his own preferred way, but an automated system will freeze, or at least drastically lose efficiency, if it is fed work in that way.”

In contrast, the Mega-Cell is a production system that ties together all available opportunities to automate and control the process. “In doing this, enormous dividends are being paid not only within the more automated areas, particularly the Mega-Cell, but in all areas operating. Far fewer mistakes are made, and with strict first article inspection, any errors are found immediately and thus corrected at very low cost on whole.”