Speaker 0 00:00:01 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Hello everyone. And welcome to the <inaudible> robot nation podcast. My name is Jim Beretta and I am your host we're broadcasting from Cambridge Ontario. Today. I'd like to thank and acknowledge our sponsor. <inaudible> three, the association for advancing automation. Three is the umbrella association for the RIA AIA MCMA N a three Mexico. These or associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, components, suppliers, systems integrators, and users, manufacturers, research groups, and consulting firms throughout the world that are driving automation forward. And I'd like to introduce our guests today. Erin Johnson is the vice president of marketing and customer strategy and part of the technical sales team at Accumold. He is recognized as a leader on the subject of micro injection molding and is developed and presented numerous technical presentations on micro molding technology and has been published in many industry trade publications. He's been with Accumold since 2005. So welcome to the podcast, Aaron,
Speaker 2 00:01:14 Thank you, Jim. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 00:01:16 I'm glad you could make it in our, um, discovery call. We both talked about the fact that we both have kind of COVID puppies or you have to drive a while to get yours. So if we hear some yips in the background that we know that it's just one of our dogs vying for attention. Absolutely. One of the things I wanted to ask you is kind of who is at Accumold and how did you get into the molding industry, especially the micro molding industry.
Speaker 2 00:01:42 That's a great question. Acura mold was founded a little over 35 years ago by a couple of toolmakers who were seeing the need for small high precision plastics kind of grow. They were working for a micro electronics company and in the tool shop and just seeing, you know, the advent of what we know today as micro electronics, you know, in 1985, you know, Motorola had just come out with their great brick cell phone. You know, it was huge. It took two hands to use. It only made phone calls, you know, and today we can't even conceive of something like that. But what happened was, is as they were kind of thinking about the future and the need for microplastics, they basically quit their jobs invented. What we believe was the first true micro injection molding system dedicated to the efficiencies and the speed of small plastic components and their old company ended up being one of the first customers of vacuum all back in the late eighties, if you will, and really were pioneering micro high precision plastics. And so they started in a rented garage kind of story, and it just kind of grew from there. And we had the fantastic opportunity of being ahead of the curve when it came to the demand for microplastics. And now today, you know, as you look around and you see all the electronics around you and the sophistication that's involved, it's just allowed us to participate and grow with that, um, in a, in a fun and fantastic way over the last 35 years.
Speaker 1 00:03:19 So I'm going to date myself a little bit because I actually owned one of those big old brick Motorola phones. And if you're listening to this from internet computer, you can go and Google that cause it's a, quite a, quite a product. Hey, so when you talk about micro molded parts with sizes, micro molded, and like, so when you decide to quote a program, what, what is too small, too small? Or what is it, when is it too big?
Speaker 2 00:03:44 That's a great question. Um, you know, there really isn't a textbook definition of what is micro molding. So we've really kind of defined it for ourselves over the last 30 plus years. And, you know, in one sense it's injection molding. So if you're familiar with the process, you have to have a mold, you have to have a way for them, the plastic to melt and get into the cavity and away for the mold to open and close. So there's, there's a basic kind of set of what is molding, but the micro molding we've really kind of come to define it in one of three ways, certainly micro in size as the name suggests is a big component. Um, we're often asked to mold parts there maybe the largest, uh, geometry or, or length is, you know, under a millimeter. And so size is a big factor when it comes to what is micro molding.
Speaker 2 00:04:32 The other real major component is micro features. The largest part that we mold is maybe four or five inches in diameter, or, uh, will often kind of refer to it as a one ounce kind of shot size ish. You know, we, we kind of said, we want to be experts with parts, you know, about this size on down. And so these larger parts that we, uh, kind of take on, have micro features to them. Um, one of the larger parts we mold has a, it's a cartridge for a diagnostics tool and it has these little micron, uh, sized, uh, fluidic channels, uh, for the product to, to function. So it's this big part, but it has these micro features to it. And then the third way that we kind of define micro molding is micro intolerance. And so there's, it kind of goes with the, the critical components that we go.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 And then we, we build that, you know, we're dealing with, you know, some in some cases plus, or minus two or three microns and tolerance. And so there's an exactness to the micro molding that we're doing. That's kind of beyond maybe more of a traditional molding standpoint. And we often hear that, you know, uh, from traditional molders, Oh, the, you know, the parts you mold are smaller than the gate sizes that we have, or they're smaller than the tolerances that we keep on some of the products. So it's really kind of the extreme end of molding from a size of tolerance and a critical nature. But what's challenging about that is there's some gray area there terms of when as apart really fit true micro molding. And so we found anecdotally that there's some, there's kind of a general rule. One, we, we work on what we call critical components that if you can find 20 other molders to make it, it's probably not something that we're going to take on, but it's usually when your supply chain pushes back and says, Nope, that's too small. That's too complex. Those tolerances, aren't something we're used to, and you get pushed back from that. That's usually where we get involved. So there's a, um, a critical level to what we're doing that is not every day. And that's, uh, you know, where we find the most, um, uh, involvement and projects for our customers.
Speaker 1 00:06:39 So I'm used to kind of their classic traditional automotive mold sizes with what's a mold look like in micro molding. And do you have like thousands of cavities or how does that work?
Speaker 2 00:06:52 So the that's a very, very common question because, um, when you, if you're familiar with injection molding, you think maybe, you know, the press sizes, you have a, you know, a 35 ton up to a 1500 ton, and there's all sorts of ranges in between and even bigger than that. And what we really really were at Accumold was born in the beginning of this appropriate size things, is that it all has to fit the efficiencies that you're looking for. So while the injection molding machine, the micro molding machine that, you know, there's several on the market today from the major manufacturers, I kind of liken it to buying a Steinway piano. You can have this really nice piano, but if you don't have the virtuoso, so to go with it, you know, it's just a nice piece of furniture. And so the machine and the tool and the tool maker all have to go in tandem and it's really geared towards what's appropriate for the material handling the material management.
Speaker 2 00:07:48 So, you know, you're not processing these giant runners that are causing material degradation and resonance time. And so the scale follows the part. And so some of the parts that we mold the mold, you can hold in your hand quite easily. And then on our small mold side, you know, that's more of a, um, a more of a traditional size and scale where, you know, yeah, it takes a little hoist to get some of those up. But the other part of what you said is that single cavities is multi cavity. Hey, if it's really tiny, you should be able to hit fit thousands in there. And while in a theoretical sense, yeah, you could probably make a very high cavitation, a micro mold, but what we're after in our customers are often after our, the quality side of it. And when you're dealing with micron tolerances, cavity, KV variation has a big component to that.
Speaker 2 00:08:41 So we tend to be lower cavitation, but it can be multi cavity, but probably not in the same vein that you're making a say, plastic spoons in some giant, 128 cavity mold. That's big enough for you to walk into we're dealing with high speed, you know, high, accurate, lower cavitation type systems. And like I said, we've been able to do this from prototype volumes all the way up to high scale high cavity or, um, high, high velocity type product to meet consumer demand. The crazy thing about micro molding is that you, you don't really don't use much material in a year because your parts are so small. How do you deal with that? Well, some of our residents suppliers, I often tease with that. Uh, you know, they don't like us because of 50 pound bags, sometimes the last, the customer, a lifetime. Um, and so that, I mean, that's the beauty of micro molding that it's very efficient to the part size that you're after the advantage there is if you're dealing with expensive engineered resins, we're doing that as efficiently as you possibly can and make the part.
Speaker 2 00:09:48 And so it's fantastic for med devices. Sometimes they're dealing with maybe an implantable materials, some other very, um, expensive, um, you know, biocompatible or some other feature thereafter type of material. So, um, there's a, there's, there can be a huge advantage there, but we work very closely with our resident suppliers to make sure that we have the best supply. And we have great relationships with, with our resin suppliers for extra compounding or some specialty material that our customer is looking for. There was a period in time where that was challenged, but I think they've seen that the demand for high precision components is out there. They want to participate and have become great partners for us. So the parts are so small. What are some of the part handling considerations for a micro molding? Like, let's say you have to handle off these tiny, tiny parts to a robot or to a quality system.
Speaker 2 00:10:45 Yeah. In some cases, part handling is actually more difficult than the molding itself. Uh, I mentioned the little part that's under a millimeter. It's one that we, it's kind of our smallest commercial part that we're allowed to talk about. It's 800 microns at its longest about 360 by 300, um, kind of on its smaller sides. And so handling that part was actually more difficult when we first started the process and we're prototyping them. Um, we were trying to figure out, well, where are all the parts going? We're trying to collect them and harvest them after the molding process, but the cycle time and the frequency didn't match what we were collecting. And then we discovered that the static actually in the room, the parts were so small, they were kind of floating up and sticking to the mold, sticking to the wall. And so we had to deal one with an environmental kind of situation.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 And so we were able to, to handle that then the next step was this customer one at that tiny part, they wanted it packaged in tape and reel. They wanted it clocked and oriented in a particular way so that their automation systems could pick it up. And it, so we're, we're often having to do a lot of innovation around how we're going to pick up parts, how we're going to move them around, how we're gonna inspect them. Cause that's a big piece of this as well. So part handling is a big part of the early conversation. When we're talking about design for manufacturability, it's not just, can we make the part you want? Can we measure it? Can we package it and get it to you the way you want? And so sometimes it's micro robotics. Sometimes we'll actually, uh, mold a feature or leave it on the runner and provide it to our customers where they'll do the, kind of the secondary operations in their automation, because they just want to use it as a handle.
Speaker 2 00:12:35 There was one project we did for a endoscopic project. It was a four element camera lens in each lens. There were four of them were about a millimeter in diameter and the customer then would stack them together to create the focus and things that they were after, but we gave it to them on the runner as handles, and then they built a fixture that would allow them to assemble those altogether. So it's a definitely a part of the conversation early on, you know, of course, some just go in bulk in a bag and they're easy to handle, but those extreme ones definitely take a lot more conversation.
Speaker 1 00:13:11 Thanks. That's great. That's just fascinating. You do a lot. I'm assuming you do a lot of work in medical device. Where are you seeing growth or innovation in the medical device industry?
Speaker 2 00:13:20 Yeah, the biggest area we're seeing is kind of in this a point of care, right at the patient level, you know, the wearables kind of market is maybe the easiest way to talk about it. You know, the, the, the device makers are looking for ways to collect better data, more real time, uh, less invasive and intrusive for the patient and then certainly more discreet. And whether it comes from, you know, a surgical tool or some kind of thing that you have to wear on your body discretion is often, you know, uh, of high value. And so miniaturization is a big, big piece to that. And being able to do more in the same space or more and less put more surgical or delivery or diagnostic tools inside a particular French size of a catheter, or what have you. And so pushing the limits, um, ultimately come down to the mechanical side of the equation and, um, micro molding has been a great enabling technology to help med device reduce form factors and add functionality, um, to their devices. And I think we're really only beginning to see the beginning of this movement in terms of, um, wearable devices, the things that it can tell us about our health and then what it can tell our doctor.
Speaker 1 00:14:39 Yes, it's a very exciting time to be part of the automation industry and the supplying of these really critical components. How do you innovate in the micro molding industry? Like how is it funded? Is it you the customer? Is it, how does that happen?
Speaker 2 00:14:54 Well, it's mostly us in terms of, I mean, directly indirectly, you know, it's all driven by customer demand. Um, you know, we try as much as we can to innovate around what, you know, market relevance our company is in Iowa. We are the state of, if you build it, they will come. Um, but that's not a real good business model. So, um, we try to obviously build things that we believe the market is wanting. And a lot of that is driven by customer demand, but what's, what's unique or maybe fun about Accumold. Since, as I mentioned, we started with this innovation and we started with building machines. We we're a organization built around building solutions. And so we can build a custom micro molding cell that fits a particular customer's application. We're always developing our own systems internally. We have a whole department that's dedicated to making sure we understand the technologies that are available to us, and that we, that are either something we can use to better ourselves, our systems inside or things that are complimentary to micro molding that we think our customers would take advantage of and try to marry those things together.
Speaker 2 00:16:08 So we participate heavily in the learning side of it as well, and making sure that we're educated, but it really comes out of our, our cap ex spending our own reinvestment in our own organization to make sure that we're continually being relevant to the customers that, uh, that we want to serve.
Speaker 1 00:16:27 That's good to know. It's, you know, uh, you, you being relevant is very, very important. What are some of the things that you see as the future in micro molding or miniaturization? Well,
Speaker 2 00:16:38 In some respects, we feel like we've been doing this for 35 years and it seems like forever. Uh, I've only been here for 15 years, so I'm not quite half of that time, but the world is still getting smaller. And I had a, a senior level executive in our organization asked me once, you know, what's, what's the pipeline look like? And I said, you know, we're often running into customers that didn't need us today, but all of a sudden their product changed and the demand change and they need us tomorrow. And so there's whole industries that haven't got to that miniaturization level yet, because it's not just a form factors, it's all sorts of the, their supply chain that have to be able to catch up, to get to these levels. And when those things finally do, we're working in market sectors that didn't exist all that long ago. So there are, you know, you just think about the automotive world by itself and where sensors have come into play in automotive in just the last five to six years or so. Um, it's skyrocketed and you're only going to see more and more applications like that, where you're bringing more functionality to it. And it's oftentimes to come through
Speaker 1 00:17:50 Microtechnology of some point and, you know, the form factors that go along with that. Hey, Aaron, thanks very much for that. I think that's very, very, it's a fascinating industry. It's hard to believe, but you just, things are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. You kind of think there'll be some ended site, but it doesn't sound like there is. Well, we certainly hope not. Thanks Aaron, for taking time out of your day to chat with our audience. Um, if you, if they really, maybe there's some people out there that are wondering if have some other questions for you, how do people get in touch with you? Yeah, that's great. I'd love to talk with you. I certainly, I love talking about micro molding. Um, you can reach me personally at H Johnson at <inaudible> dot com. That's ACC U hyphen M L d.com for, uh, you, uh, American, uh, mold spellers. If you will, or you can reach me on LinkedIn and you can certainly reach our organization at our website at <inaudible> dot com, ACU hyphen M O L d.com. Love to talk to you about micro molding. Yes. If you were in Canada, you'd be an Accu uld.com.
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[email protected]. If you have an idea on interesting company or technology, you'd like to be a guest or nominate someone to be a guest, please get in touch with me over email and I'm on LinkedIn as well. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Be safe up there. Today's podcast was produced by customer traction, industrial marketing, and I'd like to thank my nephew, Chris gray for the music, Chris Colvin for the audio, my partner, Janet, and our partner, the <inaudible> association for advancing automation and painted robot, our WordPress and Zoho expert partner. We are on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. So feel free to follow us and you can also subscribe on robot nation.ca.
