Lead time to series pro­duc­tion —
When tool­mak­ing leads to delays

As a rule, cus­tomers cre­ate a design draw­ing of the required mold­ed part before con­tact­ing a pro­duc­tion part­ner such as Jäger — Gum­mi und Kun­st­stoff. How­ev­er, this draw­ing is often focused on the geo­met­ric require­ments of the fin­ished com­po­nent, not on its pro­duc­tion. As a result, cus­tomer spec­i­fi­ca­tions are often not designed for production.

Com­mon prob­lems include miss­ing draft angles or miss­ing radii. Oth­er errors are pro­duc­tion-spe­cif­ic and escape design­ers who are not famil­iar with the material.

One exam­ple is the dif­fer­ent flow behav­ior of rub­ber and plas­tic. Rub­ber is inject­ed cold into the mold and then heat­ed or vul­can­ized, while plas­tic is inject­ed hot and cools/solidifies in the mold. In both cas­es, the raw com­pound behaves fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent­ly dur­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing. How­ev­er, the sub­tleties are found with­in the mate­ri­als used. Each mate­r­i­al — whether plas­tic or rub­ber — flows dif­fer­ent­ly dur­ing the injec­tion process. Here, know-how is essen­tial in order to select the type and method of gat­ing, as oth­er­wise var­i­ous defects can occur in the mate­r­i­al of the end prod­uct, e.g. vis­i­ble flow defects.