Had some sample parts off of a new mold from China shipped Monday.

Tracking showed them in Anchorage AK yesterday. They showed up today via Louisville KY. That's a lot of miles.

 

UPS hauls *** while its in an airplane, once it hits the ground it seems to slow down a bunch.

 

It just gets me that a package can travel 15,000 miles in 48 hours. That's over a 300 mph AVERAGE.

 

 

just curious..mold for what??

 

LOLZ at pic!!!

 

Shipping was not fast because UPS is awesome, shipping was fast because China actually outsourced production of the part to Alaska, where work was completed by Sarah Palin's daughters, their boyfriends and their illegitimate children as a way of raising funds for her (increasingly desperate) 2012 presidential bid. Thus, the item actually traveled half the distance you thought it did.

 

Sorry, nothing fun. Just a clear polycarbonate enclosure for a gas meter dial. Yes, we outsource the mold building to China, but after approval the mold comes to our facility for production molding.

 

Isn't this kind of the opposite way things should work? Build the mold in the US and then go offshore for the production?

Is the economy that bad?

 

Tooling in China is dirt compared to US. If the enclosure he has to build is big enough, shipping costs could make it more lucrative to produce here, especially with cheap labor (unemployed).

 

when your choice is to pay $80,000 for a tool built in the US or $45,000 for a tool built in china and shipped to the US, you dont really need much time to decide.

john: you know any good molders that make tools in china and ship them here?

 

Yep. We even have a guy on the ground over there that takes care of everything from reviewing engineering for us, keeping tabs on the build, attends all of the tool trials so no BS gets pulled. He works with three shops for us over there. Matt, shoot me some .stp files when you have your next project to tool up.

The reason that we build the tools over there is what Matt said - tooling is cheap. But, our customers want the parts molded domestically. Plus, becuase the molds run automatic, there isn't a heavy labor charge associated, so costs to produce the parts are very competitive, especially when we factor in freight and duty.

We generally ship the molds by air. It's a bit pricey but we have them in 7-10 days instead of 8 weeks so the complete tool delivery leadtime to our door is comparable to US tooling. One of the shops we use is 2,000,000 square feet and has 60,000 employees. They can put out 400 molds a month. This is compared to 40 a year that we built on a good year.

We used to build all of our molds in house, but the costs got too high and I had to do what I did to stay competitive. We really don't care about the tooling, we just want the production molding. That's what gives year after year. Tooling is a one time job.

 

I just hope UPS gets my replacement hard drive here tomorrow. The current one started making a really evil sound this morning.

Incidentally, ever try shopping for a 1.8" PATA hard drive with a LIF film-cable connector? They're not particularly common. Turns out it's the same drive Apple used in the 4G iPod, and so far as I can tell, that's the only other machine in the universe that contains this particular drive.

 

I personally love the ridiculous inconsistency of the good ole USPS. I shipped a package 100 miles across Florida and the thing took 6 months to get there. Then I shipped a package 4500 miles across the Atlantic ocean and it was there in 3 days.

 

I shipped a package USPS to France and it go there before the package I shipped to cali.

 

Word. We're working on one now. Expect to be included in the quote submissions.

I've also noticed that even air shipping the tool isn't that bad if you want to save time. what's a few hundred more dollars on that tooling cost? nothin.

One other reason for molding domestically on foreign tools is strict material requirements. I've seen all sorts of weird bullshit plastics without certs pooped into molds in other countries. Here in the US at least you can guarantee you'll get the material you have on your drawing. Turns out the FDA cares what plastic goes into medical devices.... etc etc.

 

This.

 

Interesting train of thought...

We have a lot of molded and extruded parts in our current audio consoles. Mostly injection-molded plastic end-panels, one piece which is an aluminum sand-casting and a couple that are aluminum extrusion.

Typically, we do a couple of SLA prototypes, and then hand it all off to a domestic supplier to both make the tooling and do the production. (With the exception of the actual semiconductors themselves, our products are 100% USA made).

I wonder if there would be a meaningful savings in Chinese-made tooling for us? The initial tooling cost is always a comparatively large burden, since we're pretty low volume on the production pieces. Couple hundred a year on most of the products. Less than that on some. As a result, we often have to compromise in certain areas, by using a folded or rolled sheet-metal part instead of a cast or extruded part for instance.

 

Yes, Joe, you would see a significant savings. Low volume molding causes the amortization of the tooling to become a major issue, sometimes so significant that it kills the project.

Unfortunately, we have seen a change in pricing over the last few years. When we started to go to China, tooling was 1/3 of the cost of US built tooling. Now that difference is down to about 30% less than US tooling. There has been some increase in their costs, plus an increase in freight, but the biggest difference is they are starting to market base their pricing. They knew they were leaving money on the table so they took some back. They know that we will still use them at a 30% savings so they price it there.

In the beginning, it was a risk and they were trying to develop the market so they priced it so low that it was worth the gamble. Now that they are established, they bumped up the pricing.

 

Joe, they also do aluminum casting for us. We bring the raw castings in house and do the production machining here. Again, the benefit is very inexpensive tooling, especially sand cast tooling. It is something that you should look into. The biggest risk is who to go with. I'm sure that you get emails every day from another China molder soliciting your business. I get several a day, but that jumped when we paid the big bucks to get top billing on thomasnet.com. After that, all of the China molders and mold builders started sending me emails soliciting our business.