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Technical Precision Plastics

“Multi-Shot Molding”
 PLASTIC INJECTION MOLDING By Rebecca Carnes

Customers Get Capacity,

Expanded Offerings from
North Carolina Company
Injection Molder Always Poised to Handle More Work as it Offers Customers Multi-Shot Molding

W hen opportunity knocks and new business arrives at the

front steps of Technical Precision Plastics, Inc., a con-
stant percentage of the company’s 46 injection molding
machines are poised and ready to take on new projects—something
customers are always looking to hear.
responsive as long as it’s feasible and can be done. We have to be
willing to step up to the challenge.”
Technical Precision Plastics’ customers’ needs drive their ma-
chinery purchases and, with a lion’s share of business made of mostly
mid-sized parts ranging from 20 to 50 grams, most of the company’s
“We have a 10 to 15 percent window for excess capacity, so that machines are in the 165-ton range. “We try to strategically project out.
when new work does come in the door, we’re ready to move and We get long-term forecasts and we use those numbers for equipment
that’s what you have to do in this business,” said general manager planning, and so as our business grows, we add machines based on
Rick Malec. historical data and based on those forecasts,” Malec said.
The first thing new customers want to know is “What’s your
capacity?” and “Can you take on this work?” Malec said. “Because Multi-Shot Molding
the last thing they want to be in is a situation where we’re making Filling a Niche
a decision or trade-off on which customer to fill an order for. They The company has made a strategic move into multi-shot mold-
want a level of comfort where the capacity is there and it’s not going ing and its most recent machinery purchase was for a three-shot
to be an issue. Price is an element, but if you don’t have machine. Although the multi-shot molding makes up
that capacity available, they will write you off.” only about 15 percent of business, Malec sees
And for Mebane, N.C.-based Techni- that as a growing part of business and as
cal Precision Plastics (www.technical- a way to attract new customers who
precisionplastics.com), existing have the numbers to justify multi-
customers are not apt to give shot needs. Because the invest-
advance warning that they ment for multi-shot molding
have a new project they is more, it’s really aimed
want to launch. “Our cus- at customers who order
tomers aren’t going to be 20 to 30 million parts
waiting around,” he said. a year. But the ultimate
“They want to know that savings and the quality
you have those machines improvements can be
ready and the financial tremendous.
ability to purchase new “The general benefits
equipment.” to multi-shot are the signifi-
With 46 injection molding cant reduction in part costs
machines ranging from 55- to and improved quality. You get
350-ton clamp force, as well as 29 a much more robust product when
years of experience as a company, Tech- you do it as two-shot or three-shot be-
nical Precision Plastics (TPP) is poised to fill cause you’re making a complete part in one
customers’ needs at a moment’s notice and to go cycle instead of having three machines running
the extra mile if needed, Malec said. “Our ability to Multi-shot molding enabled these screw three parts and assembling them and putting
be responsive can’t be understated,” he said. “We driver handles to not only be more durable, them together. So you’re saving a tremendous
have requests all the time to run on Thanksgiving but also more aesthetically pleasing. Photo amount of labor and a tremendous amount of
courtesy of Technical Precision Plastics.
Day and Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, and money on machine time itself. It’s very efficient
when you have those kinds of needs and emergen- from a cost standpoint for the unit price, the
cies, you can’t say no. I’m not sure there are a lot of businesses out piece part price,” Malec said, adding that savings can be in the area
there that are willing to sign up for those types of things, but we’re of 50 percent.
 Besides the increased capital investment cost for TPP, which can have that use multi-shot are the multi-billion dollar companies, so
be three or four times as expensive as standard molding machines, we’re not talking about small players. They’re all big names that
the process itself is very complex and the initial cost to the customer everybody’s heard of and everybody knows.”
is higher. “Multi-shot molding machines are unique and so when you Although multi-shot can be a hard sell, Malec and Corrado agree
build a mold, the mold has to be specifically designed for a given that a customer’s interest in the process usually follows one of two
machine and you can’t really move those around. You have to design paths. One is that a customer comes to TPP already knowing that they
the molds specifically for the machine.” want to try multi-shot because their engineering group has designed
In conventional injection molding, universal standards allow a around it. The other is that TPP may take a customer aside to explain
given mold to be moved from machine to machine. “You can trans- the benefits, as it did for a medical customer looking for a diagnos-
fer your tools and transfer your work and it’s pretty seamless. But tic part. Multi-shot enabled TPP to mold an elastomer onto a rigid
with multi-shot molding, it’s more dedicated. Once you marry up a plastic to get a seal like an O-ring and saved the medical company
mold to a machine, you’re pretty much locked into that’s where it’s about $20 million annually by converting multiple components into
going to run, so there are trade-offs in flexibility,” Malec explained. a single, multi-shot molding job.
Whether or not to go with multi-shot molding comes down to a “When there are two or three components, you typically use
numbers game, said Jim Corrado, business development manager three machines, each making one part, and then you’re taking those
for TPP. “We’re not talking about 25,000 pieces a year, which some three parts and assembling them, and a very common practice is to
customers look at as their annual usage. But when you’re in the 10 ultrasonically weld the plastic parts to one another,” Malec said. “But
million plus range, that’s where multi-shot comes into play,” he said. if you propose doing a multi-shot program, it could save millions
Technical Precision Plastics makes screw driver handles for one of dollars a year. Those types of cost reductions are very attractive
company using three-shot molding because they have the volume to our customers, and [that’s] what they are looking for from their
behind their order to justify spending more money on the tooling preferred suppliers.”
for multi-shot. “It’s usually an established product; something that’s Bringing that total cost down is a huge driver of interest in the
been on the market where it’s high volume. It’s got to be the right multi-shot process. “It’s a numbers game,” Corrado added. “All of
application, the right product, and the right volume,” Corrado said. these companies are first looking for cost reductions. Upper manage-
Multi-shot enabled the screw driver handles to be improved both aes- ment is always pushing down, saying ‘We want you to put some focus
thetically and integrity wise. “It looks a whole lot better, it feels a whole and effort on reducing our costs,’ and they always turn to the supply
lot better in your hand, and it’s more durable. You can’t separate base to look for cost reductions. We look for those opportunities,
the components. When they’re molded with multi- and that’s an emphasis of our company, our engi-
shot, the plastic materials are fused together neering group. We like to bring opportunities
and even though they’re three different to our customers to give them savings,
materials, they actually become and and that’s really important in the
act as one. They don’t come apart long term; it’s a partnership. Being
from a durability standpoint. just a good molder and being
Those screw driver handles will good at supplying parts is fine,
go through rough treatment but you have to go that extra
and they don’t come apart, mile, and going that extra
they don’t break down,” mile is working with them
Malec said. to reduce their costs.”
The company currently With multi-shot, the
has four multi-shot ma- integrity of the product,
chines, including one that the feel of the product, and
was added in 2012. Once the look of the product are
that machine is operating always far superior, Malec
at 100 percent capacity, TPP said, adding that these factors,
plans to purchase another one, as well as the cost reduction,
and Malec and Corrado expect the make multi-shot especially ap-
multi-shot end of the business to con- pealing for the medical market. For
tinue to grow. “We are talking to an existing medical products, not only is there a huge
customer about doing an additional job, which cost reduction with multi-shot, but at the same
would be launched next year. So we’re growing time, TPP can solve a number of quality issues.
that (multi-shot) business. It’s not the majority of For medical products, multi-shot molding “They (medical company) had these products
what we do, but it’s a good niche market for us,” can yield significant cost savings and where the assemblies weren’t holding together,
solve quality issues. Medical parts made
Malec said. “It’s a lot more difficult technically, by TPP are used in surgery for stapling and they had these tubes carrying fluid that were
so most molders don’t want to mess with it and and ligation. The company also makes a leaking, and we solved that quality problem when
don’t want to get into it because it’s a lot of work, wide variety of high-diagnostic disposables we introduced the multi-shot,” Malec said.
a lot of effort, and takes a lot of engineering to for procedures like DNA testing. Photo With much of their work coming from the
make it happen. But we have all that and we’re courtesy of Technical Precision Plastics. medical industry, Malec and Corrado are quick
comfortable with it and we feel it’s a niche, it’s a to point out that TPP has clean room facilities
strength, and we’re out there trying to sell it. Again, it’s a hard sell in both its North Carolina and Dominican Republic facilities. The
because of the tooling investment and the only customers that we company has three ISO 8 class 100,000 clean rooms and one ISO 7
10,000 clean room with ISO 9001:2000, ISO 13485:2003, and 21CFR
820 compliant certifications.
“Everybody in injection molding will tell you they’d love to do
medical work, or that they’re looking for more medical work,” Malec
said. “The real serious players in medical injection molding have to
have the quality controls and support programs.” Technical Precision
Plastics also serves the aerospace, agricultural, consumer, textile, and
automotive markets. “The whole aerospace market, from an injection
molding standpoint, is a niche in itself,” he continued. “We make
housings for smoke detectors that go on aircraft, and those are made
from a polyetherimide that’s an FST grade, so it’s modified to meet
FAA guidelines. In addition, that part gets a number of metal inserts
put into it and we do the whole assembly; it’s a challenging project.”
Malec added that the company completed a number of proprietary
methods to use with the injection molds.
Technical Precision Plastics offers a number of in-house second-
ary operations, including automated and manual assembly, special
packaging and labeling, ultrasonic welding, ultrasonic inserting,
adhesive assembly, silicone assembly, and heat staking. “It puts ev-
erything under one roof and makes their (customer’s) life simpler,”
Malec said. “When we say we do post-molding operations, it could be
something as simple as ultrasonic welding two plastic parts together,
This is a reprint of an article that ran in the February 2013 edition of Design-2-Part magazine
but we also, on the other end of the spectrum, make products where
we’re molding eight plastic parts, purchasing outside non-plastic
components from approved suppliers, and doing the total assembly
and shipping out the whole assembly of the product to the customer.
We’re not just shipping parts made from the molding.” He added that
the company is getting into molding the components, sorting them
into a certain number of pieces per bag, bar coding a label on that
bag, boxing them up, and adding instruction manuals to the bags.
Long-term business relationships are built on value, Malec said,
explaining that the company sees this as having an obligation to its
customers to recommend ways of lowering costs. During the past
five years, TPP has initiated projects that have reduced its customers’
costs by more than $25 million, he said, adding that the biggest proj-
ects involved conversion of a two-component assembly into a single
multi-shot product. Business is quite stable, Malec said, explaining
that 80 percent of the company’s business has been with customers
they’ve had for 15 years or more.
And as business grows, Malec and Corrado see interest growing
for multi-shot as well, something they plan on keeping up with as
enthusiasm increases. “We’re seeing it more and more. With certain
customers, certain products are requiring it a little bit more as the
process evolves,” Corrado said.