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Mold Designer
The Mold Designer is responsible for creating designs of molds used in the production of plastic parts, such as electrical connectors, packaging, housings, toys, containers, automotive parts, appliance parts, and many others. The molds may be used for injection molding, compression molding, transfer molding, extrusion, blow molding and other processes. The Mold Designer must visualize and design the manner in which the plastic part will be oriented in the mold, the configuration of the cavity contours, various inserts and cores which will shape the plastic, mechanisms necessary to move cores and undercut contours of the cavities in and out of position as the mold is operated, the means of ejecting the molded parts from the mold, the system by which plastic resin will be introduced into the mold, venting to allow air to escape from the mold as resin is introduced, and the system by which the mold will be cooled to allow the resins to solidify.
The Mold Designer must have excellent math skills, excellent mechanical aptitude and knowledge of materials and their characteristics, must have excellent knowledge of available components for construction of molds, and must have thorough knowledge of the capabilities of molding equipment for which the molds are designed, as well as capabilities of machine tools used in manufacture of the molds. The Mold Designer must have excellent communication skills in order to work with engineers, process technicians, toolmakers and mold builders. The Mold Designer must have mastery of Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Engineering software.