Greetings from Maple Plain, MN. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Protomold update and would like to convey a special welcome to those of you who visited us at the recent SolidWorks World, National Manufacturing Week, and Twin Cities Pro E Users Group conferences. We hope you find this occasional update from Protomold useful and informative.

In this update we're covering the following topics:

- Side actions are coming
- Using telescoping shutoffs to remove undercuts
- Our new & improved web site
- The upcoming Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing Show
- Protomold expands (again)
- We now take American Express

Note: If you have something you'd like to see us address in a future email update, just send us your thoughts via email to info@protomold.co.uk.

Big news: Protomold is in the process of expanding Rapid Injection Moulding to include some limited side action capabilities. If your ProtoQuote identifies an undercut you just can't live without, let us know and we will take a closer look. Our capacity to produce moulds with simple side action is limited and 5 day and 10 day delivery options are not yet available, but we plan to make this a part of our standard ProtoQuote and manufacturing processes in the coming months.

Due to the straight-pull requirement of our standard Rapid Injection Moulding process, undercuts are the most common part feature flagged as an issue by the ProtoQuote system. Sometimes these undercuts can be easily eliminated from the design without sacrificing functionality. Sometimes they can't.

One technique that has proven valuable to many designers is to anticipate the use of "telescoping shutoffs" to produce a feature that would otherwise require a side action in the mould. A telescoping shutoff occurs when two shutoff surfaces slide relative to each other as the mould opens and closes. Typically one or both mould halves will have projections designed to provide some desired geometry internal to the other half of the mould. The intent of this Design Tip is to illustrate some example design changes of this nature.

In the first figure, a through-hole feature is redesigned to allow a projection from the lower half of the mould to form the base of the hole. In this case the design tradeoff is the resulting slot in the part, which for many applications would have no adverse effect on functionality.

In the second example, a through-hole is redesigned to be a set of staggered top and bottom semicircular elements that can easily be formed through the use of telescoping shutoffs in the mould. In many cases this structure would provide the same functionality as the original design without requiring the use of side actions, thereby making it a viable candidate for the standard Protomold process.

If you haven't visited the Protomold web site (www.protomold.co.uk) recently, please check it out and let us know what you think. We've attempted to make it faster and easier to find the information you need and upload your 3D CAD model to get your ProtoQuote. New or improved sections include design guidelines for injection moulding, example Rapid Injection Moulding case studies and several "related services" from other companies you might find useful.

Protomold will be at the Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing Conference May 12-15 in Chicago, Illinois. Additional information on NDES can be found on the SME web site at www.sme.org.

If you are planning to attend the RP&M exposition and would like a free ticket (normal admission is $45), we have a limited number provided by the conference and would be happy to mail one to you. Just e-mail your request and mailing address to info@protomold.co.uk.

Protomold is doubling the size of our Maple Plain facility in order to continue to meet our customers' increasing demand for Real Parts, Real Fast with Real Savings. We expect to have the move-in completed by the end of this month, at which point we will have expanded to approximately 30,000 square feet.

We now accept your Visa, MasterCard and American Express card as payment.

If you are new to Protomold, we are bringing together information-age technologies and an advanced mould-making process to radically reduce the time it takes to create injection moulding tooling for smaller volumes of relatively simple parts.

This means that we can mould your parts faster and more cost effectively than anyone else, and in the engineering resin of your choice - including glass filled. Please see our web site for other application examples or request a quote on-line!