We have our own Tool Shop soley for mold preventative maintenance, repair, and rebuild. Is there any industry standard/rule of thumb such as: For every $Xmillion worth of molds that are running at a given time, you should expect to spend $Y/year for preventative maintenance, repair, rebuild.

We make bottle caps or closures in high cavitation US built molds that are the best we know how to buy. We are challenged by Management that our maintenance costs are too high. Molds run 5-20MM cycles before replacement.

Ed,
I would like an opporutnity to discuss that with you and possibly show you how to reduce the cost of maintenance and repair. Please contact me at 401.722.6942 or email usmwalee@verizon.net
Sincerely,
lee r. gilbert, president USMWA Inc

Well, Ed, that's management for you, challenge them to reduce the cost of their entertainment.

5-20 mil cycles those are some nicely built molds.
Here are some off the cuff questions that may or may not help you. Large multi cavity molds are just difficult to maintain even well made ones. And this is mostly dealing with flash.
Are you charting the individual molds and treating the cavity's as individuals and know exactly when failures occur so you can look for a pattern. Chart the press also, platen problems, valve problems.
Are the failures due to mis handling during servicing? Dropped, dinged, cleaned with sand paper.
Are you assembling and dis assembling with an adjustable torque pneumatic impact wrench. If so get an estimate as to how much torque is at each setting, know how much torque is needed, just for an example a 10-32 screw. A guy with a cheater bar pulling till he hears a pop isn't the way to go.
How clean are your water lines? A 1/32 build up can causes a 20%+ drop in cooling efficiency. Control your cooling and flash problems will be greatly reduced.
Any plating in the cavity, is it flaking off?
If not plated, can a coating like nickelon be used to help reduce flash at the 5 - 20 mil cycle to get some more life out of it.
Outside the tool room, are the presses closing with a cushion or do they slam.
EJ Pin flash, breakage, gaulding what kind of lube are you using, same for leader pins.
Does any one just wipe clean the face of the mold some time during each shift?
After the above things and many more I've missed, Microweld, this should be a last resort since it doesn't fix the root problem but corrects the result of it. Best of luck.

Hi Ed:

I too have worked in the closure mold industry. Having done such I have made many friends in the industry.

An excellent contact for you is Steve Johnson. He wrote and distributes a product called MoldTrax. Steve was the Toolroom Manager for a trigger sprayer company in Washington Court House, OH. You can contact him through his web-site at http://www.moldtrax.com

Please feel free to visit our web site as well at http://www.promoldinc.com

I hope that this information is useful to you.

Scott