Peter Smith and his partner Mark Vincent started RPM International Tool and Die, based in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1986 in a 1,000 square-foot building. Today, they’re in a 50,000 square-foot building, with more than 50 employees running their machines six days a week.
But RPM didn’t just grow their business by office size and man-power. Smart business choices and Pro/ENGINEER elevated RPM to the top of the manufacturing food chain, keeping the small company in pace with China, India and Eastern Europe. In 1997, RPM joined a supplier program hosted by Fisher and Paykel, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality consumer appliances. One of the requirements of Fisher and Paykel’s program is that suppliers must use Pro/ENGINEER because Fisher and Paykel themselves are standardized on Pro/ENGINEER.
Today, Fisher and Paykel accounts for about a quarter of RPM’s business, so the move to Pro/ENGINEER has clearly paid off.
A challenging assignment. RPM recently built a complex injection mold for a motor controller housing in just four weeks. The project began with Fisher and Paykel supplying RPM with a not-yet-finalized 3D model of the two-part motor controller housing. RPM’s tool designers used the model to create the rough shape of the mold, subtracting the space that would be used by the part from a model of a large block of steel – the “bounding box” – that encompasses the total external topology of what would become the injection mold.
The next step was to create the A and B plates for the mold – to break the block in half, in effect, in order to show the two parting surfaces. Parting surfaces can be demanding, because they often contain complex curves to accommodate the asymmetrical outer design of the part.
“Pro/ENGINEER Tool Design automates this process and shaved hours off of the design process,” says Mark Vincent, RPM’s sales and marketing manager and founding partner. “It’s just one of several ways that Pro/ENGINEER helped us meet the four-week deadline.”
With the mold base design complete, RPM then began laying out the mold’s inner features, the ejector pins, cooling pipes and plastic inserts. RPM’s designers used Pro/ENGINEER Expert Moldbase Extension (EMX) to do the layout in 2D – the manufacturing view of the unit – and then switch back to a 3D view in order to check and correct any layout errors. These might include an incorrect movement of the ejector pins, or an unwarranted intersection of water cooling pipes – a mistake that could cause leakage in the finished mold.
Compatibility shrinks the schedule. “The key to making our deadline was that we were able to start our manufacturing before Fisher and Paykel had completed their design of the finished part,” says Vincent.
“We knew that the original model Fisher and Paykel sent us was about 80 percent complete, so we used that to rough out our own design,” he says. “And we used the rough dimensions of our design to send to manufacturing. The die set, with all pockets, waterways, ejector pin holes and screw holes, was manufactured by our workshop that uses Pro/ENGINEER for its CNC tool path creation. And we manufactured the main core and cavity inserts, which contained the provisions for clips and other detailed features.”
Meanwhile, as Fisher and Paykel’s designers finalized their model of the motor controller housing, they sent the updated models to RPM.
“We imported the new model, and Pro/ENGINEER automatically updated our mold manufacturing models,” says Vincent. “With the mold updated we passed the new information along to manufacturing, and their tool path updated to reflect the new design, dramatically reducing production time and cost.”
In all, RPM ran double shifts of designers, CNC programmers, and operators, wire cut operators, polishers and toolmakers in order to finish the job on time. “Final assembly and checking took three days,” says Vincent. “Then it was on to the first tool trial.”
Up to speed. Vincent thinks eight years ago, it would have been impossible to meet a deadline like this, because they would have been working manually. “Now we’ve got two big advantages,” he says. “First, Pro/ENGINEER by itself helps us preserve our reputation as a high-end machine shop, thanks to features like automated tool design and EMX. Second, we’ve got native compatibility with our single biggest customer, so we can do everything possible to keep them coming back, and keep the relationship growing.”
RPM International Tool & Die, based on Auckland’s North Shore, New Zealand, is a concept-to-completion service manufacturing tools and dies, its projects range from stadium seating to dishwasher components.
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