And I can make them, because I have...
No lefty will make the connection
- Thread starter Diogenes
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And I can make them, because I have...
How much longer will you be around, though?
I dunno.
The CNC is replacing us.
Is CNC replacing the Americans who know how to do this?
No. CNC machines the steel; it does not design the mold.
Aaron Slodov’s post highlights a real constraint: complex injection mold and die design (especially multi-slide, collapsible-core, multi-shot, hot-runner, high-cavitation tooling of the kind shown in the video) is a high-skill specialty that has thinned out in the U.S. Industry sources (MoldMaking Technology surveys, trade groups, shop owners) consistently report an aging workforce, weak pipeline of new designers, and difficulty filling roles even when shops want to hire. Entry-level postings often demand years of experience, apprenticeship programs have shrunk, and many shops lost institutional knowledge when work moved offshore.
What CNC actually does
- CNC (and related CAM software, 5-axis mills, EDM, etc.) executes the toolpaths that cut cores, cavities, slides, and electrodes from hardened steel once the design exists.
- Modern CAD/CAM suites (Cimatron, VISI, NX Mold, etc.) automate a lot of the detailing, parting-line generation, electrode design, and toolpath creation. This has reduced pure hand-fitting and polishing labor compared with 30–40 years ago.
- It has not eliminated the need for people who understand plastic flow, cooling circuits, ejection, draft, shrinkage, steel selection, residual stress, and how a mold will actually run for hundreds of thousands or millions of cycles. Those decisions still come from experienced designers. AI and simulation help, but they are tools, not replacements for judgment on complex production tooling.
Why the skill base eroded
- Decades of offshoring high-volume molds to Asia (China in particular) reduced the volume of domestic design/build work that trains the next generation.
- Cultural and educational shifts steered people away from manufacturing trades.
- Boomer retirements are hitting the remaining shops hard; knowledge transfer has been incomplete.
- Result: shops still need the expertise, lead times and costs stay high when domestic capacity is tight, and reshoring efforts run into the same bottleneck.
CNC and digital tools make each skilled person more productive and let shops hit tighter tolerances with less handwork. They do not create the design knowledge itself. Companies like the one Slodov is building are explicitly trying to accelerate tooling production while keeping (or rebuilding) the human design layer, because pure automation of the full design-to-production chain for sophisticated molds is not here yet.
The video shows the physical complexity that still requires that expertise. CNC is essential infrastructure for making those tools; it is not a substitute for the people who know how to design them.
CNC vs. Mold Design Expertise | Shared Grok Conversation
Is CNC replacing the Americans who know how to do this? https://x.com/aphysicist/status/208908283151
grok.com
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
I did rubber, Diallyl Phthalate thermoset, and epoxies as both transfer molds and injection molds. Machining them is far different from designing them. I did the later. I had machinists with the talent make them.
I did one injection mold for this electrical connector that had 18 pins in it. That was a real trick to make work. The molding crew had these 'speed loaders' they used to put the pins in the mold for each cycle. Even those were something of a trick to make.
Another one was a rubber transfer mold that saved the Navy over $1 million. Their original engineering plan was stupid from the second I saw the drawing. Got a nice attaboy letter from an Admiral for that one.
Save your dick-measuring contests with the cat-killing Mason for the VFW hall bar, or wherever the fuck Boomers go to swap stories about how great they used to be.
The future of US manufacturing is at risk.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
I don't disagree. But I was designing and getting injection and rubber molds made back int he day.
You see those silver-ish things that the two sailors are holding? Those are AN/ADU-801E SLAM ER adapter brackets. I supervised the manufacture of the first 400 for the US military in a joint project with the USAF. There's a little rubber pad on the end of those that the missile rests on. The original drawings called for a PRC two-part urethane rubber product.
Having used that shit before, I immediately sought an alternative. So, I red inked all over their drawing to a new spec with a copy of the new mil-spec to use a buna batch rubber instead using a transfer mold in a hot press. The change gave the end product a better more durable rubber, I needed just one mold to make all 400 and the per part manufacturing time fell from 6 to 8 hours to 10 minutes. The savings in equipment, molds, and labor worked out to an estimated over $1 million.
About halfway up that thing you can just see a small silver bar. That is the position where you hook the cargo strap for the missile to secure to the trailer. 306 Stainless steel. The idiot engineers used cheap carbon steel roll pins to hold it together. Had a time changing that because it was obvious that it'd be far too easy to have one move in service and stick out slightly resulting in a nice, deep, wound to someone's hand.
Looks like they changed the finish to white paint. The originals were soaked in this toxic stew of a chemical to give them a corrosion resistant surface (7654 Aluminum). Hated that shit. No way to easily get rid of it other than natural evaporation and deal with the solid residue (it was water based so that couldn't be objected to).
This was for a follow-on batch:
Into the Night
Contributor
Already happened, Void. There are quite a few tool and die makers already.I feel confident that the necessary training can happen, as it has with every other job function in the history of ever.
Into the Night
Contributor
Nice.I don't disagree. But I was designing and getting injection and rubber molds made back int he day.
You see those silver-ish things that the two sailors are holding? Those are AN/ADU-801E SLAM ER adapter brackets. I supervised the manufacture of the first 400 for the US military in a joint project with the USAF. There's a little rubber pad on the end of those that the missile rests on. The original drawings called for a PRC two-part urethane rubber product.
Having used that shit before, I immediately sought an alternative. So, I red inked all over their drawing to a new spec with a copy of the new mil-spec to use a buna batch rubber instead using a transfer mold in a hot press. The change gave the end product a better more durable rubber, I needed just one mold to make all 400 and the per part manufacturing time fell from 6 to 8 hours to 10 minutes. The savings in equipment, molds, and labor worked out to an estimated over $1 million.
About halfway up that thing you can just see a small silver bar. That is the position where you hook the cargo strap for the missile to secure to the trailer. 306 Stainless steel. The idiot engineers used cheap carbon steel roll pins to hold it together. Had a time changing that because it was obvious that it'd be far too easy to have one move in service and stick out slightly resulting in a nice, deep, wound to someone's hand.
Looks like they changed the finish to white paint. The originals were soaked in this toxic stew of a chemical to give them a corrosion resistant surface (7654 Aluminum). Hated that shit. No way to easily get rid of it other than natural evaporation and deal with the solid residue (it was water based so that couldn't be objected to).
This was for a follow-on batch:
Into the Night
Contributor
Did you know someone has to generate the CNC file and debug it?
Did you know there still a lot of one-off machining that is done? Not worth a CNC file.
CNC doesn't replace anyone. It is simply a file that guides a machine in a repetitive manner. You can make part after part with automation.
The first time automation was used that way in America was around 1901, then using mechanical linkage to perform repetitive operations instead of CNC files.
Just because YOU don't know how to drill a hole doesn't mean everyone else is clueless.
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This happens in every industry, by the way, AFAIK
Boomer men (the ones who aren't homos or pedos) would rather spend their time staring at young women's tits than becoming a mentor for the next generation of men.
They would rather flirt with women 40 years their junior who think they're creepy than pass down the knowledge older generations passed onto them.
All the knowledge young men possess was learned by themselves.
Our entire generation is "self taught" which boomers used to brag about because of how rare it was during their generation.
Of course I do. Have you ever set one up? Select tooling and position them?
Of course I do. I specialized in it. I ran a small machine shop.
Oh, but it does replace someone. CNCs are so repetitive, and fast.I don't know any machinist who could put out 150 pieces faster than a CNC.
Since when do they have CNC files in 1901? Mechanical linkage was replaced by hydraulics.
I drilled cross holes in hypodermic needles on a Bridgeport. You?
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
I disagree. What happened was feminism. Women gained access to all the 'men only' parts of society.
I saw this with the Navy. There were all sorts of initiations as you went through your career. They were anywhere from annoying, to silly, to a real slog of just dumb stuff you put up with.
You got advanced in rank? Those you were now equal in rank to "punched your crow" on. Sore arm usually.
Crossing the equator? Shellback was an all day trail of dumb stuff and nastiness.
Chief's initiation? That one went on for over a month or more. It was anywhere from trying to insane.
But you put up with all of it. Looking back, for men it was a shared experience, a right of passage. For women, now admitted to this world, it made no sense and was just stupid. They whined and complained and got it all toned down to meaninglessness.
The other thing that's happened is fewer and fewer men it seems are the sort of self-reliant do-it-yourself types who learned starting at an early age how to fix, maintain, and build things. Part of that comes again from the feminist takeover. Prior to that, kids roamed the neighborhood largely unsupervised. A bicycle was a means to go explore the world. It broke, you learned to fix it.
Now, in this feminist age, children must be supervised at all times. They are protected from going off and doing anything on their own. Safety before all else.
Jobs that used to take weeks of training to learn to an entry level where you'd then get better at it working with guys that had years of experience now require years of classroom training first, often because the feminized school system failed to teach any useful trade skills and basic knowledge, just to get someone up to a basic level of ability to take a job.
Boomers weren't and aren't the problem here, liberal women are.
You make some excellent points.
Opinion | How Women Destroyed the West
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2Un8SVn0g UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with Helen Andrews, former senior editor at The American Conservative and author of Boomers, to discuss her provocative and widely-debated article in Compact Magazine, The Great Feminization. They discuss: why female...
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