Molded Rubber Case Study

Rubber Tires

Issue: We were approached by an innovator who had developed a new longer lasting tire for a popular large scale radio controlled racing car. While he had developed a great product and orders were pouring in, he had difficulty getting the tires made and orders filled. A mold he developed more for plastics than rubber was simply not yielding enough good parts to meet his customers demand. He was referred to us by his material supplier and asked if we would attempt to run the mold.

Objective: Not only did we accept the challenge of running a difficult mold, we wanted to go beyond that success and provide valuable feedback to our customer based upon our knowledge and experience in molding rubber to help him decide if his current mold and molding processes were even capable of producing a product that could meet his demand and be cost effective.

J.J. Short Processes: We accepted the challenge but requested patience as we scientifically isolated different factors in loading, running and extracting products from the mold, to see if we could increase production and provide tires our new customer could sell.

Results: Phenomenal! Within days we identified several factors in the production cycle that needed to be altered.  We employed simple strategies such as cutting the blanks and pre-heating them before loading the mold, to subtle changes to the mold itself to better accommodate the flow of rubber through the mold and the extraction of the product from the mold to minimize the times in between heats. We narrowed in on the optimal blank weight and maximized yield from the customers material. We increased production and delivered more quality, saleable tires in a week than the customer's previous molder had produced in a month. The customer was able to ship and eliminate his backlog of orders and fulfill new orders in a more reasonable time frame.

We also were realistic with the customer. We honestly discussed with him the steps we needed to go through to insure good products and the costs involved in taking those steps. We stated we could not run the mold for the pricing he was receiving from his previous vendor. We outlined a staggered approach to move the pricing to levels that were fair to us which allowed the customer to adjust his pricing. We also suggested other ways we felt he may be able to control costs going forward.

This approach is how we deal with every job and every customer. We strive for a mutually respectful relationship that will result in customer loyalty and not just customer satisfaction.

If it's made from rubber, contact us!