Ask the Stamping Expert: Where can we find skilled tool designers?

A: I think you answered your own question: Start a tool design apprenticeship program. Tool design is a very specialized part of manufacturing and stamping. Product engineering analysis, planning, design, construction, and applications of forming methods all must be thoroughly thought out to yield the most effective manufacturing process. Best-in-class tool designers must know not only toolmaking procedures, but also machine shop practices; toolroom machine tool methods and capabilities; and conventional engineering disciplines such as material properties, physics, and mechanical engineering.

So how do you start an apprenticeship program? Look to your seasoned toolmakers. After they complete their toolmaking apprenticeship and have four to five years of solid tool building and maintenance experience, move them into a design apprenticeship program.

What to Teach

Your in-house training should include a fair amount of education in other disciplines rather than just a focus on learning specific software so they can efficiently spit out tool drawings. Be sure to cover a variety of concepts:

• Balancing tool cost with required volumes and expected program life. *Minimizing part cost by minimizing raw material usage.
• Exploring multiple tool layouts to maximize stamping speed.
• Designing in quality by understanding customer requirements.
• Designing robust tooling to ensure the production toolroom can effectively maintain it.

Also be sure to spend sufficient time teaching the apprentices about sensors that are used to fail-safe the tooling. And please teach them how the sensors work and the basic electrical principles they use. I can’t tell you how many times a designer designs a sensor into a tool, only to find out it does not perform as intended because he did not know how it actually works. Learning after a tool is built that burying a proximity sensor in steel affects how it works only leads to rework and debugging.

Why Train the Toolmakers?

One benefit of teaching your experienced toolmakers how to be tool designers is that they already know how the tooling is made. They know how a wire EDM works, how it affects a carbide punch, and when to choose grinding instead. They know the capabilities of jig grinders and surface grinders. They know that sizing a very accurate blind hole to one thousandth of an inch all the way to the bottom is next to impossible.

These apprentices will design for the easiest and most accurate fabrication techniques, and this talent is very valuable for keeping tooling and maintenance costs in check.

Another benefit is that they will not design tooling that is hard or impossible to service. As toolmakers, they have already faced the frustration of dealing with that type of tooling, so in designing their own, they will do the opposite and design in such features as toe strap slots and wire EDM inserts, which they know simplify the toolmaker’s job.

I can’t stress enough the benefits of having designers who have a skilled toolmaking background. They can design in best-in-practice manufacturing and maintenance capabilities to optimize your stamping process.