bepps

My work part two. Look back to my previous journal entries for the first two paragraphs. This is a whole novel and I'll try and give it to you one chapter at a time.

At the time I was hired on at my work they also hired a few other machinist guys. They needed folks to help them build molds for a spa company. Before they made these spas they pretty much had only made water tanks for the R.V. industry. Pretty much every single R.V. you see on the highways has our tanks in it. These guys have a firm lock on that industry. But Howard wanted to expand his customer base and product range so they were able to convince Sundance spas (the ones who make spas under the Jacuzzi brand) that they could make them a spa. Which we did. We built the mold for their first round spa in around 4 months, then a few more months for their square spa. These spas are made by rotational molding. I'll talk about process that later.

The design of the spa itself was handled entirely by Sundance. Most of the machine work was done by Ed, this guy who was basically a parts loader for CNC machines until he went to school to learn how to program the machines. He wasn't a very inventive guy and inventiveness is crucial if you're going to be involved in mold design. Injection molds aren't just holes in the metal where molten plastic is squirted, they're machines. To be a mold designer you have to be a machine designer. He was pretty much a button pusher so as soon as the mold for the square spa was made they shit canned him. Another guy who was working here was Ken. This guy was pretty sharp and a somewhat decent machinist, albeit a lil too .. 'easy going' is how I'll put it. He wasn't lazy, just always liked to take the easiest route when it was practical. Not all that bad a quality, but he wasn't really the perfectionist that I am. But he was a good guy. He worked too far away though and started his own company back up. Ken was a really cool guy. One of the friendliest people you'll ever meet. I miss that guy.

Although I'm trying to break this up into chapters, this entry leaves us at the same place we left off yesterday. I'm still Howards sole product and tool designer and his sole machinist.

For more information on what injection molding is see the wikipedia entry. Although this picture explains the jist of it. Not shown is the ejection assembly that virtually all injection molds have or coolant lines or any of the parts that most molds consist of such as alignment pins and things.