An experienced Injection Molder, this company was looking to reduce costs by manufacturing the extruded components they needed rather that having them made outside. There was concern about purchasing the equipment as components rather than as a system due to fears about learning curves.

Since the profiles being considered for manufacture were relatively simple, and the changeovers would be limited because the number of different products would be small, we felt that the cost savings would justify looking seriously at purchasing the equipment separately rather than as a turnkey.

We broke the system into three logical sub-categories: the extruder, the tooling and die, and thirdly the downstream equipment. The extruder manufacturer provided the information about the throughputs we could expect, and the tooling and die maker provided information about the tooling that would be provided, so the downstream could be configured correctly. When the dies were completed, training was performed at the die maker's facility using the actual dies, and using equipment in the lab at the die maker's facility. So one of the key factors here was working with a die maker that had the properly equipped lab, and who would visit the plant site at start-up.

The die maker visited the plant during start up as did the downstream extrusion technician. This facilitated a smooth and trouble-free start-up , at a significant savings for the plant over the cost of a turn key solution.