E N G I N E E R / B U I L D / M A I N TA I N

OCTOBER 2018

The New Face of Mold
Manufacturing PG 12.

Gaining a Foothold in Mexico PG 24.
Drilling with Milling
Transforms 2D Machining PG 28.
How to Quickly Generate 3D
Runner Mesh PG 48.
A property of Gardner Business MediaVOLUME 21 / NUMBER 10

Case Study / Machining
VIDEO

Access the related video under
the Videos tab at MMT online.

By Cynthia Kustush
Midwest Mold Services (Midwest Mold) in
Roseville, Michigan, used to outsource boring mill and gundrill work to companies thatservice the overflow from mold builders withmore work than they can handle. It became
clear over the last two years that with theboom in automotive jobs came elongated linesof shops waiting for that work to be done andreturned. Once the work came back, the rush
would begin and overtime became standard,
as were extended lead times. Because of this,Midwest Mold became the first mold shop in
the United States to purchase a CNC machinefrom Cheto Corp. S.A. (Oliveira de Azeméis,Portugal), an investment that brought theoutsourced work in-house and solved mulMidwest Mold Services purchased this Cheto IXN2000 deep-hole drilling and milling
tiple challenges, according to Midwest Mold
CNC machine for its ability to perform all required 2D machining in one setup, saving a
President and CEO John Hill.
significant amount of time and money in addition to reducing lead times. Midwest Mold is thefirst U.S. moldmaking company to own a Cheto.
Plastics engineers founded Midwest Moldin 1994. They were seeking to provide support to automotive original equipment
opportunity, he says. However, it became very cyclical in
manufacturers (OEMs) and their Tier 1 custom molders.
nature—when molds were not breaking, less work was availHill says, “I came from a large production mold builder,able. Before long, regular customers began asking for new
and every time we would get these emergency repairs or
molds, and because Midwest Mold had all the necessary
engineering changes, it would interrupt the flow of theequipment (like the ability to receive and process mold data,
new tool builds and jeopardize delivery dates. We saw that
CNC machines, programming software and a skilled workas an opportunity.” Going down that path was a very goodforce), the company began building new molds. “The rest ishistory, as they say,” Hill says. “Today, about 75 percent of
our revenue is new tool construction, and then a portion of
MIDWEST MOLD SERVICES
that is prototypes, repairs and engineering changes to toolsthat we have built.” In 2006, the company began offering
PROBLEM: Outsourcing gundrill and boring mill work
low-volume molding of non-automotive plastic parts in an
significantly extended lead times and affected delivery
effort not to compete with its customer base.
dates, requiring a lot of overtime and expense.

SOLUTION: Midwest Mold Services invested in a Cheto
Corp. S.A. IXN2000 deep-hole drilling and milling CNCmachine.
RESULTS: Midwest Mold Services gained the ability toperform both deep-hole drilling and milling on one machine,which significantly reduced lead times and costs.

28

MoldMaking Technology —— OCTOBER 2018

Vendor Capacity Dried Out“For the past 20 years, we’ve been designing and building
high-volume production tools without a gundrill or boringmill on our premises,” Hill says. Midwest Mold began using
the consulting services of Harbour Results Inc. (HRI), which
forecasted two years ago that automotive OEM demands
would exceed the capacity of Tier 1 and 2 mold suppliers.

Images courtesy of Midwest Mold Services.

CNC Deep-Hole Drilling with Milling Transforms
Moldmaker’s 2D Machining Processes

INNOVATIVE
SOLUTIONS“We were hearing and seeing that happen, and then it was not long before westarted feeling it,” he says. “It negatively affected our lead times and our delivery dates, and it was causing us to pay excessive overtime to compensate forservices that our sub-suppliers used to be able to provide us in the past.”
Hill says that he began researching various brands of gundrill machines,
knowing that his company had to bring that capability in-house as soon as
possible. Molds that Midwest Mold builds often run in 2,000-ton and 2,500ton injection presses. “But, our sweet spot is in the 300- to 750-ton range, andthe majority of our machines are set up around that X and Y travel, size-wise,”he says. Purchasing a gundrill that would be large enough to accommodate
the molds Midwest Mold was building required Hill to custom-order it and bepatient. “It’s the same with any of the gundrill manufacturers for machines ofthat size, whether it’s a German manufacturer or U.S or European, the gundrill
is a built-to-order machine,” he says. “So, we knew that we would have to get
in line and wait our turn. When your machine is done, it is done.”
While he was searching, Hill also contacted Dan Meehan, president ofPerformance Machinery LLC (Sterling Heights, Michigan), a CNC machinesupplier with whom Midwest Mold has built a 20-year relationship. It turned
out that Meehan was in negotiations with Cheto Corp. S.A. (Cheto) to be its
U.S. distributor. “The timing was perfect,” Hill says.
Meehan explains that he met Carlos Teixeira, Cheto’s CEO, at IMTS 2016
and immediately saw a great potential partner whose technology was juststarting to take off in Portugal and Europe. “We both felt it also could make asincere impact on the U.S. mold-building community,” he says.

The Cheto IXN2000 is aseven-axis machine. The
automatic rotary tablemeasures 1,600 millimetersby 1,300 millimeters andspindle speed is 4,500 rpm.
The all-in-one concept enables
moldmakers to perform multiple
operations with one setup,
including deep-hole drilling,radial drilling, milling, tapping
and boring. For Midwest Mold
Services, its ability to drill 40
inches in one direction is asignificant benefit.

Not Your Ordinary CNC“The more that Dan and I talked, the more I got exposed to Cheto’s equipment
and capabilities, which were unlike anything that I had ever seen before,” Hillsays. “This machine can do the milling. It can do the deep-hole drilling, and it
can do all the 2D work on one machine. The workpiece goes on this machine,
and it does not come off until 100 percent of the 2D work is completed.”
The Cheto IXN2000 is a seven-axis machine. The automatic rotary tablemeasures 1,600 millimeters by 1,300 millimeters and the spindle speed is 4,500rpm. According to Cheto, the all-in-one concept enables moldmakers to perform multiple operations with one setup, including deep-hole drilling, radialdrilling, milling, tapping and boring. “It is not simultaneous machining like afive-axis CNC, but the Cheto has seven movements,” Hill says. The pivot point

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Case Study / Machining
TopicMidwest Mold Services is already seeing a 20-percent reduction in theamount of direct labor on the 2D side of the mold-building process since itbegan using the Cheto IXN2000. Gundrilling and boring work that used to beoutsourced and that would take three to six weeks to complete now can bedone in-house in five days or less. Additionally, the Cheto uses water-based
coolant instead of oil, which offers a safer, cleaner process and eliminatescross-contamination with little or no deceleration in cutting speeds.

of the head is at the very front of the column, so it can index
up and down 25 degrees and 15 degrees, with an option for ±25 degrees. Additionally, the spindle can travel all the way tothe center of the table to reach smaller parts. “The table canrotate any increment of 360 degrees, and then there are theX, Y, Z and W axes. Users can machine all four sides. They
can set it up on its side. They can do compound angles. It’s
just so versatile,” he says. This machine is a game changer
because again, it is a 2D machine for the mold building sideof mold manufacturing, and it can do it all versus a machinethat only does gundrilling or milling.” Meehan says that
other unique features of the Cheto include the fact that it isa “floor-mounted” machine, meaning that there is no need topour deep, expensive foundations. Also, every Cheto has linear glass scales or encoders (or both) on every axis.
Because of his long-term relationship with Meehan, andbecause Cheto wanted to bring a machine to the UnitedStates, Hill says that he knew he would get the support heneeded, and it made his decision easy. “I was looking at othermachines, but it was because of the multitasking capabilities
that I bought the Cheto IXN2000 deep-hole drilling CNC
machine sight-unseen,” he says.
Capability and Capacity CountThe 3D contouring machining centers that Midwest Moldowns cannot do what the Cheto can do, but the Cheto can
do what the 3D contouring machines can do, Hill says. “I30

MoldMaking Technology —— OCTOBER 2018

can drill holes with my other CNC machines. I just can’t
drill deep holes. I can purchase standard, through-coolant
spindles and drills for the standard CNC machines but notup to 40 inches in length. They are limited to about 16–18
inches, and a lot of that has to do with the Z height because
they are vertical machines that must compensate for thecutter length and for the size of the blocks being machined.
To go deeper, we go horizontal, and that is what the Chetois, a horizontal machine.”
He says that the Cheto IXN2000’s footprint is about 22
feet by 22 feet. “We basically have a big room built aroundthe table, column and base, and they have to be able to moveaway from each other, so we have a much longer horizontalmachine,” he says. While most boring mills are horizontal forthat length and size, Hill says they do not have the uniquecapabilities of the Cheto. “Had we settled for just a gundrill,
we would have only solved one problem here. With theCheto, we solved multiple problems. That machine can drill
40 inches in one direction and that is significant.”
Gaining Control Over a New System
Midwest Mold has 43 employees, two of whom havereceived training on the Cheto IXN2000, working in tandem to get full use of the equipment. Hill says it was avery involved process once the machine was delivered fromPortugal. For example, he says that the controller on theCheto is new to Midwest Mold. “We’re very used to FANUC
controls, Mitsubishi controls and the programming software, but the Cheto uses the Wise Active Control system.
It also uses a European control called Fagor CNC 8065
Windows 7, which is not used commonly in the U.S. moldmaking industry. So, our guys are learning new software,learning a new control, learning a new machine and Chetois training them simultaneously, which has enabled them toget jobs up and running fairly quickly.”
Meehan explains how the patented Wise software increases the Cheto’s machine performance, giving Midwest Mold
additional advantages. “The software measures load on boththe spindle motor and the drive motor to detect the hardness changes in the block of steel and automatically adjusts
the feedrate to facilitate this hardness change,” he says. “Thisfeature also increases the tool life by as much as three to fourtimes the normal length according to Cheto users that wetalked to in Portugal.” Meehan adds that the Wise monitoring function also measures the coolant pressure in the cut.
“The Cheto uses a water-based coolant instead of oil, which
is truly unique.” He says that using coolant combined with
the Wise software and the newer technology in drills enables
the user to run a safer process with little or no decelerationin cutting speeds. “Using coolant versus oil eliminates any
cross-contamination as the block moves through the shopfrom machine to machine,” he says. “Coolant is cleaner forthe operator, and it is contained because we install mist collectors on the Cheto machines.”
Cheto also uses a screw-driven, high-pressure pump which
provides more consistent pressure for more stable machining,plus the Wise software can detect holes and cavities as thedrill breaks into and out of the steel, which is another uniquefeature, according to Meehan.
Saving Real Time and Money
When asked to quantify the time that Midwest Mold is
now saving with the new Cheto, Hill says that previously,
the 2D work was being handled in-house and that themold halves would then be sent out for gundrilling andboring. Taking into consideration the shipping time plus
the time that the work waits to get on a machine at thesub supplier and then the actual machining time, he says
it would take anywhere from three to six weeks to get thetwo mold halves machined and returned. “With the Cheto,
we are doing everything in five days or less,” he says. “Thatis real time, and time is money.
“Cheto understands the machining and the processing,”
Hill says. “Cheto knows that for us to be profitable in moldbuilding, we must reduce the amount of direct labor that

goes into building a mold. There are so many steps that must
happen, but if we can reduce the amount of direct labor, wecan improve our profitability. This machine does just that—itreduces the direct labor, it reduces setup time. It’s a gamechanger. I can’t say enough about that.”
Since the installation and training on the Cheto in June,Midwest Mold is already seeing a 20-percent reduction in theamount of direct labor on the 2D side of the mold-building
process, Hill says. “The 2D is only a portion of the total moldbuild, but that 20-percent time savings gives us more capacity to do more work without adding more direct labor,” hesays. “It also gives us the ability to improve the timeframein which we get these jobs done. We’re always against theclock—that is just the way the trade is, so any hours that wesave and any efficiency improvements that we make equals
dollars that we save.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Cheto Corp. S.A. / 351-256-820-384 / cheto.eu/en
Midwest Mold Services / 586-888-8800 / midwestmold.com
Performance Machinery LLC / 586-698-2508 /performancemachineryllc.com

ENGINEER / BUILD / MAINTAINUPCOMING
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hasco.com

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DATE & TIME:

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