The road to tooling knowhow

It was Thursday morning, 09:20, the final day of Interplas, and Jorge Leitão, UK Commercial Director, Simoldes Tools, was wiping down the bright white counter of the booth with a dust cloth. “Good morning”, he said, and asked if I can take a photograph of him and his team. The booth was decorated with various automotive parts hanging from wooden partitions.

“This is a front bumper,” he began, “manufactured by one of our customers for the new Mini John Cooper Works.” This, he said, is the highest-level component for the Mini brand and all the tools producing these parts have been manufactured by Simoldes Tools, including the grill, fog bezel and spoiler. “Only the logo is incorporated from another manufacturer.”

These tools are currently in the UK and in production of the automobile itself. “The full assembly can have different materials, but the main one being polypropylene. Some have polypropylene with a percentage of talc which can be 15 or 20 per cent, depending on the OEM’s choice.” Talc, he continued, is an additive given to polypropylene – in this case – to reinforce it with greater rigidity after the moulding process.

Being 100 per cent polypropylene, the bumper is fully recyclable. “It is common,” Leitão added, “for these to be made in a way that can be recycled and used in other products at end of life.”

I asked him to explain a little about designing and the mould making process for such an intricate set of parts. “This takes a lot of time,” he began. “When you see a car on the road, at least three or four years earlier, someone started to design and develop the components to to produce the assembly.” When the design is ready, the toolmaker analyses the component to confirm that it can be tooled and that the tool can be manufactured or modified to make it feasible. “From there it goes to the milling process where it starts to take shape, then it goes into the press machine to produce the first plastic part. It is often the case that we then add some improvements and corrections until we arrive at the final condition of the product, and we can then test it on the car. It is a long process with a few iterations along the way.”

The next automotive feature Leitão presented was a liftgate for a Nissan Qashqai. The ‘roof spoiler’, as he named it, looked like a single part but was in fact composed of a handful of assembled parts – some invisible – to make the complete set. “We’ve been involved with the customer on this project in the complete roof spoiler that makes part of the design and gives a certain look to this vehicle. The material used is a highly robust ABS PC selected to give the correct strength to avoid movement and distortion.”

The Portugal-based toolmaking business is dedicated mostly to the automotive sector, which provides around 95 per cent of its turnover. Although one of the reasons for exhibiting was to try to expand the remaining five per cent of Simoldes’ non-automotive tools business. At this point, Leitão had not yet had the opportunity to leave the Simoldes Tools booth and explore other booths. “Perhaps I can find time,” he lamented, “to visit the other stands to see what can be found in a non-automotive business so we can share experiences and support, and perhaps expand into other sectors, as well as amplify our automotive expertise. We are looking at medical, packaging, containers and pallet boxes, so, hopefully, I will find someone to speak with.”

For the purpose of my visit to the booth, I was happy to discuss automotive applications, and so Leitão led me to another wooden partition adorned with door panels manufactured for Jaguar. I counted seven separate parts but was assured that there were more. Each panel is a combination of several plastic parts that required independent tools. “After the tools are approved by the OEM,” Leitão continued, “they go to the customer and assembly can commence. In this case, numerous moulds had to have been made to make a single door panel.”

“What kind of skills and experience do the toolmakers need in order to create such a broad range of moulds?” I asked. “Well, it takes time,” he confirmed, “as well as training. Simoldes Tools has been operating since 1959 and since then there has been an increase in business with new manufacturing plants not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil, Argentina and Germany. We were faced with the need to teach young people and keep them, offer them jobs for life. A bench operator, for example, is not just a case of getting someone in and giving them work to do. They need to be taught and given the experience over years. Every year is a learning curve. The same happens with the tool designer. It takes time because it's not only about the 3D programs, it’s about what you put into building it, because what you are designing is how your tool will work. It will result in whether your component works or not. You need to know how many feed points there will be in the mould, and it will tell you if the mould can be properly filled or not. All that knowhow takes years, and we’re always investing in new and young people because we want to teach them and keep them for many, many years. Some of my colleagues have been with Simoldes Tools for over 30 or 40 years, and it is important to have that.”

To facilitate such dedicated training policies, agreements and associations with academic institutions must form part of the business model. In both Portugal and Brazil, Simoldes Tools is preparing people for the tooling industry through sponsorship. But the demand for places is high. “Of course, there are not enough spaces for all the requests, so we have an internal school due to the high demand,” Leitão added.

I asked if it was important for Leitão that these skills are not lost or replaced by automation. “There will be, for sure, a revolution in the tooling industry. There was much more manual work 20 years ago than there is today. Now you have an operator who can control two or three high-speed milling machines simultaneously, because everything is prepared in advance. The machines run themselves. But there is still a part of that which will be difficult to replace. When we talk about designing a tool, the knowhow of making it work so the customer has no problems when the tool is running in production for five to seven years will still need to exist. It’s the same for bench operators, who have to assemble everything. It’s not like changing or replacing a component when the car is on the road. It’s about fine-tuning the component. All this will result – or not – in the performance of the end product.”