planning to start our own injection plant, help us avoid mistakes.

several years ago my wife and i were hired to manage a production floor of an outdated plastic injection plant in argentina. it has 3 horizonal presses and 1 blow injector for bottles, producing over 100 small pieces of various degrees of complexity, 3 types of bottles, some molds were made in house, others belong to customers, all machines are old except the 150 ton press - 1998 fumadi. they all leak oil, no filter changes, we have buckets everywhere to collect oil for recycling, the oil in the machines is old and hydrolics is bad with uneven pressure force on clamping units, making it hard to understand anything. reciprocating screws have never been maintained nor changed, i assume they are messed up too judging by the inhumane amount of noise they make sometimes when injecting policarbonate, abs or nylons. contamination is a big issue for days at the time after switching resin types, pressure problems too, we keep improvising all the time, no other choice. we do not work with iso, as long as the piece is visualy ok, we sell it, often we cut out the flash defects with a knife for many days at the time working through thousands of pieces so that we won't have to grind the product, molds are changed frequently, big plastic loses, the place is highly inefficient and the improvements that we made over the years have saved the business from collapsing but mostly in the area of labor and overall production costs, family politics prevent us from making bigger changes so we are now at the point where we can no longer raise the price of injected pieces nor can we keep the same price for too long. the end day is nearing and everyone is ignorant about it, the show can go on for probably 1 more year, and then we'll be jobless.

so the big idea now is to get our own shop, then to buy a brand new 100-150 ton machine and start our very own production focusing on low volume custom injection so that we don't have to rely on too much help and don't have to compete with others who produce low quality higher volumes. over time once they know us for quality we could buy another machine and hire couple of employees, keeping track of absolutely everything while managing the office side impeccably so that we always have a buffer for potentially unfulfilled order. the main thing is to remain on the floor at all times, controlling everything, and keeping maintenance records etc.

i know that you guys would recommend us hiring professionals and what not but we are on tight budget here and would like to learn as we go, we believe we can make this happen the proper way, we are both fluent in english so we can educate ourselves through the literature that's available out there as oppose to having to pay arm and a leg to someone with experience to work on the newly bought machinery (plus we do not trust anyone here), we want to run the floor ourselves, studying the ins and outs of the machinery ourselves as well as maintaining them ourselves and getting help in cases of absolute necessity only.

right now we are thinking of buying a brand new all electric press (assuming right screw size and pressure force) to avoid having to repair an old machine, but it'll cost more than hybrid and much more than hydrolic, so which machines are easier and cheaper to maintain on the long run? it's a long run vision.

should the manual for the new machine have detailed information on preventative maintenance so that we can prolong the service life of all the wearable components? how detailed are these manuals? or do we look for independent literature from the start?

to what extend can an old mold affect the alignment mechanism of the clamping unit? or the machine as a whole? what are the risks? some molds here are not well maintained or even designed, or is there a way to test the mold prior to committing to an order?

can we do well in this industry without getting someone to design our own molds? can we be working with customer's molds only? what are the disadvantages of that? not having to spend money on our own molds sounds like a good idea.

i'm afraid there may not be enough support for a new machine because not too many people have them here. am i being reasonable?

for us the risk is not in the demand side of plastics, we know for a fact we can out compete the ever present argentine incompetence, what worries us is the technical detail of the machinery that we would want to be in control of, how realistic is our independent approach?

please be brutally honest.

much thanks.

I can think of better ways to invest 100k -150k :) haha kidding.

New or used, you're probably gonna end up fixing it all the time anyways! Personally I would go used until you've got a handle on things.
Also when the molds have issues (and they will) you'll need to know how to troubleshoot and diagnose them - you might want to consider the flexibility of at least doing your own repairs.

But I think it's a great idea, I'd love to have an old machine and run parts all night and box 'em up the next morning for a paycheck! Still pondering what part it should be though :rolleyes:

Wow, that is a lot to address. As far as manuals on a new machine they will detail out in most the timeframes for preventative maintenance (PM) and also the procedure to do the PM tasks. Some manuals are more detailed than others (Arburg seems to be really detailed). You can learn how to process a part in, but in the beginning might be good to take some courses and maybe have someone with some processing experience come help set up the process till you get up to speed. As far as the molds I would have them designed and built by a good shop. Saving a couple of dollars will come back to bite you in the end. If you are bringing a mold in you could ask the customer for information on the mold and maybe see if they can send you parts. Doubt the current molder will be helpful. However just make sure to write something into the contract about a test or the mold being suitable before committing to production runs. Do qualification runs and if the part doesn't work because of the mold being crap then they have the option to fix/rebuild it at that point at their cost or move it to another shop. As far as machines I have run a lot of Arburgs and Engels that I liked. I have heard good reviews on Roboshot machines. I am not fond of Cincinnati machines or Sumitomos. Hope this helps