Of course, many parts do not lend themselves to optimal running
conditions for a variety of reasons, and a good tooling house knows many
methods to overcome such challenges, but those methods typically add
cost to the tool and slow the rate at which the tool can run.
That may be fine and well if the costs of the tooling and part
production fit the budget of the end user. However, what if the tooling
cost pushes that part out of budget or makes the product price
noncompetitive? Which features and dimensional criteria that are adding
cost to the part may be unnecessarily complex or overdimensioned?Does
the customer company have a tooling expert who reviews part designs to
ensure that they are designed with tooling feasibility and cost in mind?
Does that expert make sure that tolerances are achievable, and that the
tool will run efficiently in production? Subtle differences in how a
part is dimensioned can make significant differences in tooling and
production cost.
The tooling house rarely knows what a part’s function is. Nor does it
know the functions of the features within that part. The tooling
manufacturer is entirely dependent on the part print to design and build
a production tool that will hold required specifications called out on
the part print. While that may be how it should be, technically, if a
tooling house knows a feature’s function during the tool tryout
process—or better yet at the time of RFQ—that can be highly beneficial
in wringing out cost and smoothing an operation.For example, let’s say a
tooling manufacturer is struggling with getting a hole location to
check within tolerance on a part because of the inherent nature of the
part, combined with a tight block tolerance. After discussing it with
the customer, it’s discovered that the hole’s function is simply for
hanging the part on a paint line. Had the part designer treated that
feature for what it was—a noncritical feature—the part feature tolerance
would have reflected that, and it would not have been a problem. The
tooling house probably would have been able to quote the project at a
lower cost. The tool was likely quoted to account for the difficulty of
holding that feature in print, raising the cost of the tool.
