Concepts Engineering in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, recently signed on to participate in Roehr Tool’s Application Partner Program. Douglas Bjork, owner of Concepts and longtime part and tooling engineer, provides the following reasons for why the company so frequently applies Roehr technology. 

“Roehr is the only company that manufactures the Collapsible Core and makes it available ‘off-the-shelf’, says Doug. “Concepts has been specifying them since 1978 with great results. It is a time tested product.”

Doug also provided a few of the benefits Concepts has seen by specifying Roehr’s Collapsible Cores all these years.

He states, “Some of the benefits we associate with Roehr cores are:

● For packaging tooling, the ability to fit more cavities in a smaller footprint, which allows us to use a smaller mold base, which equates to a smaller molding machine

● Much faster cycle times due to the fact that we aren’t waiting for a hydraulic cylinder or motor to cycle back and forth

● As a designer, I know it eliminates the potential problem of not designing in a large enough drive train or too small of a cylinder due to the molding material and surface area

● Because Roehr’s cores collapse, the normal problems associated with unscrewing molds, like unscrewing sleeves galling upon initial startup, or lead nuts seizing, or bearings galling or seizing, are no longer problems

● Roehr Collapsible Cores have a stationary core in the center that allows us to put a conventional baffle or fountain water in without worrying about leaks – unlike an unscrewing mold with rotating cores that seem to always leak

● The part comes out of the mold perfect unlike some unscrewing tools that allow the plastic to act as the lead thread by unscrewing the part out of the core half of the mold, which normally deforms the last thread due to the way the mold was designed.”

An example of a C-Core tool designed by Concepts, and built by Harrington Mold in Ontario, CA.

Doug says the greatest comments he’s heard from customers is about how much faster the cycle times are on a collapsible core mold and that there is virtually no maintenance compared to conventional unscrewing molds.  

“The last mold we designed replaced a conventional, rack-driven unscrewing mold and the results were better than expected,” he says. “The original mold was running just over a minute per cycle, but the new collapsible core mold now runs at about 22 seconds. It could have cycled faster, but that’s as fast as the press could go!” In addition, he says they appreciate being able to run the tooling on smaller presses – all of this “adds up to huge savings.”