Shop Talk: Two-Year Mystery: Tiny Ceramic Culprit

For two years after I started, we dealt with a nagging problem in production at our family-owned injection molding company in rural Iowa. As the tooling manager, I was struggling with underfilled cavities in an eight-cavity mold that made water connectors for PEX lines used in homes. Even after tons of effort from the process engineers, we couldn’t seem to fix it. We ended up taking things apart and checking them carefully over and over, but still no solution.

After a long troubleshooting process, I finally had a lightbulb moment and suggested sending the manifold off for a specialized cleaning in Northern Illinois. It was a pretty big commitment in terms of time and money, and there was some hesitation initially because of the costs involved. They cleaned the manifold several times, but nothing worked. Eventually, we did a video scope inspection and discovered the real issue: a ceramic insulator was blocking the channels from a cleaning job we did two years ago!

This long-awaited breakthrough was such a relief because we finally figured out what was causing the problem. Now, the mold can run at full capacity with all eight cavities going strong. After years of dealing with quality issues and pressure to keep up with production, this feels like a big win. It really shows that sticking with it and putting in the effort can really pay off when you're up against manufacturing challenges.