A moldmaker (mouldmaker in English-speaking countries other than the US) or molder is a skilled
tradesperson who fabricates
moulds for use in casting metal products.
Moldmakers are generally employed in
foundries, where molds are used to
cast products from metals such as
aluminium and
cast iron.
Injection Molding
The term moldmaker may also be used to describe workers employed in fabricating dies and metal moulds for use in
injection moulding
Injection moulding (U.S. spelling: injection molding) is a manufacturing process for producing parts by injecting molten material into a mould, or mold. Injection moulding can be performed with a host of materials mainly including metals (for ...
and
die-casting, such as in the
plastics
Plastics are a wide range of synthetic polymers, synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their Plasticity (physics), plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be Injection moulding, moulded, Extrusion, e ...
, rubber or
ceramics industries, in which case it is sometimes regarded as a variety of the trade of the
toolmaker.
[.] The process of manufacturing molds is now often highly automated.
While much of the machining processes involved in mold making use computer-controlled equipment for the actual manufacturing of molds (particularly plastic and rubber injection and transfer). Moldmaking is still a highly skilled trade requiring expertise in manual machining, CNC machining, CNC wire EDM, CNC Ram EDM, surface grinding, hand polishing and more. Because of the high skill and intense labor involved much of the mold making in the US has been outsourced to low wage countries.
The majority of plastic and rubber parts that are in existence today are made using injection or transfer molds, requiring a mold to be manufactured by a moldmaker.
See also
*
Molding (process)
References
Metalworking occupations
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