Highland Injection Molding, Inc.

Company: Highland Injection Molding, Inc.
Product: Custom Injection Molding
Annual Sales: $9.5 million
Number of Employees: 120
Year Founded: 1985
Location: Salamanca, NY

Situation:

New York-based Emson, Inc. awarded Highland the contract to produce the Bacon Wave, a microwave bacon cooker to be sold via television infomercials. However, the single-cavity prototype mold provided by Emson required a long molding cycle and produced parts with excessive warpage after only one or two cycles in a microwave oven.

Project:

By performing flow and warp analyses on the mold, PTDC engineer Jon Meckley determined that the original gate location would not produce high quality parts. An alternative gating scheme was analyzed using MOLDFLOW^© simulation software and found to produce virtually warp-free parts. Meckley also recommended a new cooling strategy and additional manufacturing changes that decreased the Bacon Wave's molding cycle by 16 percent.

Result:

Highland was able to produce a first quality product at a reduced cost by passing on to Emson the savings created by a shorter molding cycle. Highland's contract to produce 1,000,000 Bacon Wave units retained nine full-time jobs and created nine additional part-time jobs. Company

Comments from Henry C. Walther, Manufacturing Engineer:

"As a custom injection molder, we basically sell a service. We make other people's parts using other people's molds; our service is our ability to run our machines efficiently to create a quality product at a reasonable cost. The PTDC's analyses have helped us better serve our customers and give us an edge over our competition."