In March, Pentagon Tooling, the toolmaking arm of moulder Pentagon Plastics, took delivery of a new Mikron VCE 600 Pro purchased from long term supplier GF Machining Solutions Ltd. Dave Gray caught up with Gabby Day, communications manager at the firm, to find out more about the group’s vision for growth.
Gabby Day
The new addition enhances existing CNC machining services offered by the tooling division and facilitate high-efficiency milling within the mould tool manufacturing process. The new machine has a 16,000-rpm spindle speed, Heidenhain TNC620 control system and a 24x tool magazine. This significant purchase forms part of the £500,000 total investment to enhance ourCNC machining and EDM capabilities that we started towards the end of 2022.
The new Mikron will provide versatile machining and facilitate unmanned production, with a cutting speed of 200 m/min, this high-level investment will deliver efficiency improvements and enhance cutting accuracies. Remote monitoring capabilities will guarantee machine down time iscircumvented.
DG: What types of customers drove the demand for the new CNC investment?
GD: The recent investment in EDM Wire & Spark Eroding was to serve increased demand for cutting
Gear Forms for one customer and multi-cavity tooling for plumbing connectors. The new CNC Machining Centres were less driven by customer type but more by the lack of availability of fully skilled mould toolmakers. We have been attempting to recruit suitable Toolmakers for several years and as some of our team approach retirement age it became a harsh realisation that we had to adapt our business vision. Committed to keeping our Mould Tool manufacturing services in-house we have had to consider how the business can progress despite the lack of suitable skilled engineers in the local area.
Mould tool manufacture is niche engineering skill and unfortunately the education and apprenticeship system as not supported UK engineering which has lead to the difficulties in recruitment that we are experiencing today. Although there are evident ripples of change and apprenticeships and T-levels are coming back to support industry in the future,it has left us with an extensive generational skills gap that we now need to adapt to. The £500,000 CNC investment will deliver significant advances in machining automation andprecision for Milling, Wire and Spark Eroding that existing plant equipment does not meet. As the machines will not require consistent manual operation, our toolmakers will be freed up to carry out the more specialised elements of the mould tool manufacturing process and the programming of the machines will be more akin with generalised engineering, making the recruitment of operators alittle easier.
DG: Did you see more demand for domestic toolmaking during and post-pandemic?
GD: The major increase that we saw both during and post COVID was significant increased demand for medical tooling, this varied from increased cavitations of existing tooling to facilitate increased demand to new medical products/devices coming to market. Throughout the pandemic we did havea strong through put of enquiries from independent designers and innovators who had developed innovative products that they were wanting to bring to market, often this was an initial costing exercise with the perspective customer looking to obtain crowd funding to facilitate toolinginvestment. Unfortunately, at times the products that individuals were looking to produce wereeither not compatible with our technical moulding scope of service or the high initial investment in to manufacturing tooling made the project cost prohibitive.
DG: How is that demand now? Is it levelling out, or remaining high?
GD: Demand remains steady for our UK mould tooling services post COVID with new products from both existing customers and new prospects. With regard to production of injection moulded parts demand remains at higher levels than we have previously experienced with the medical healthcare sector at the fore, but forecasting does see requirements begin to level off and we anticipate normal levels through the summer.
Demand looks like it will rise again later in the year. This is not anunusual or unexpected decline as the summer months for us are often quieter comparing forecasts against year-on-year records, however balanced over recent years we are seeing strong growth overall.
DG: What about for contract moulding? Has demand increased in that area of the business?
GD: The diversity in both the mould tooling that we produce, and the subsequent mouldings theyproduce delivers an interesting mix to both divisions of the group. Having vast experience in on-site mould tool manufacture and production processing provides a level of shared manufacturingexpertise that can deliver true added value to our customers.
DG: Are there trends in the applications that are being re-shored OR just trends in new applications from new customers generally?
GD: Notably filtration components and aerospace products are among the nature of re-shoredprojects that we see here at Pentagon. The volume of enquiries looking to re-shore is evidentlygrowing and often it is suites of tools rather than standalone tooling meaning volumes are good.Another notable wave that we have recently noticed here is a number of UK moulding companies looking to sell. Although we cannot say whether this is due to increasing overheads or lack of succession this is an interesting time for our sector.
DG: What are some of the more challenging jobs you’ve seen recently?
GD: Recent military application components for breathing equipment and valve systems are proving a really interesting challenge for several reasons; controlling fits, ensuring product is leak proof and the complexity and intricacy of the post moulding assembly requirements is proving an interesting challenge for our team.
We have also seen a high demand for servicing, refurbishing, and up issuing components in multi- cavity Caps & Closure tooling. Some of this is borne by changes in legislation regarding the tethering of Caps to bottles to reduce waste and to help improve the environment. Customers are looking to extend the life of tooling by completing extensive remedial work or are looking to convert existing tooling which are often highly complex moulds presenting their own challenges.
DG: What are your plans for future investments?
GD: We have grand plans for future improvements, and we are already in the process of starting the next big project which will be a revised layout of the Moulding Division. Departments including packing and post moulding will be expanded and re located, moulding presses and ancillaryequipment will be moved, and space created for new injection moulding presses to complement the range. The move will facilitate improved material stores and enhanced staff facilities, this will be a huge undertaking but vital step as we continue to build for future business growth. The renovation works will deliver major all-round improvement to not only manufacturing capacity but also expand capacity for increased staffing levels going forward.
DG: Will you be coming to Interplas? What do you look forward to?
GD: We are really looking forward to this year’s Interplas event, the biggest show in the company calendar of 2023! This year we will be taking our biggest stand space to date (20m sq) so visitors will be able to see a vast range of both moulding and tooling capabilities that we offer here at Pentagon, proud to show case our UK manufacturing and engineering services. Interplas never fails to deliver a prime opportunity for industry networking, informative seminars, and new business contacts.
2023 will be our 4th time at the trade event and will see a larger portion of the Pentagon team on the stand. Various team members from Pentagon will also be visiting the show over the course of the three days to meet with both existing and new suppliers, review potential new machinery forinvestment and explore new technologies that may enhance our manufacturing processes. Anyone visiting the show wanting to speak with our team should come a long to D50 for full insight into our technical moulding and mould tool capabilities.