Alpha Star Tool & Mold: Thinking Small Yields Big Results

Housed in a 12,000-square-foot brick building built in 1939 in Crystal Lake, IL, one might be surprised to find employees at Alpha Star Tool & Mold, building some of the most sophisticated and complicated tooling with some pretty advanced technology and machinery.  But they are, and quite successfully. 

Company owner and President John Thurow, along with his wife Audrey, opened Alpha Star’s doors in September of 1988.  For the first year it was he and his wife, and three other employees, and they took it one mold at a time, keeping very busy. 

Thurow’s contacts from his mold-making job of 21 years helped.  He was chief engineer at a company that built dies for smart bombs and cluster bombs, along with a lot of other defense industry work. They also built transmission valve body dies, clutch housing dies, carburator dies, fuel injector dies and shuttle molds for many switches.  

“I managed the shop there and did a lot of quoting,” Thurow explains.  “They were quite expensive and I witnessed a lot of jobs being lost and why.  When my wife and I decided to open our own place, we used my experience and contacts to pick up that business.  We were busier than ever from the first week.” 

At that time Alpha Star was located in a smaller building that they rented.  Much of the tooling being built was for the automotive industry, for functional parts most people don’t see.  The company also built tooling for consumer products.  After the first year, a director of manufacturing, Randy Wille, was brought on and by the third year the company was growing quickly and the Thurows purchased and moved their business into its current location. 

Value & Restructuring is Key 

As with most moldmaking companies during the ensuing years, times were good and there was a lot of work to be procured without too much effort.  Alpha Star had grown to 24 employees and was prosperous – until the bottom began to fall out in 2000.  By 2001 the company shrunk to 16, but, interestingly, sales only dipped about ten percent, according to Thurow. 

“We discovered that one-third of our employees did only ten percent of the work,” he says.  “We made some very severe productivity improvements over the following years.” 

One of the most notable, Thurow says, is taking the advice of their banker who told them they should not follow the path so many other businesses were following and build molds only to lose money on them.

“He told us not to give away a job just to get it,” Thurow recounts.  “We can’t compete pricewise with foreign competition – even with technology – and we know it.  So we took his advice and decided to refocus our company in another direction. 

“Value is key,” he continues.  “When our customers buy from us they get a lot more than what they expect.  Alpha Star is usually the middle bid.  We do that purposely and have been able to avoid getting into the typical price wars.  Instead, we look for that personal contact with the customer so we can explain why our middle bid will get the customer more value in the long run.” 

Thurow and son Matthew, who has worked in the company for 11 years as a sales rep, often consult with customers about the feasibility and moldability of new mold designs, helping make engineering changes and provide cost savings wherever possible. 

“We no longer say we can’t build a mold,” says Thurow.  “We find a way to do it.” 

Alpha Star offers what it calls its “Best Effort” molds as well.  These are molds built for regular customers that have a problem part and come to Alpha Star for possible solutions.  The customer agrees to pay for the production of the mold whether it runs successfully or not.  Thurow says his company has performed many such services.  In all cases but one, the molds ran perfectly and Alpha Star went on to build production molds.  

Thurow is very clear about how he bids on projects, refusing to do so over the internet for any but Alpha Star’s regular customers who know what the company is capable of.  Thurow again emphasizes his focus on personal contact and value. 

Pass the Margarita Salt 

As mentioned previously, Alpha Star builds very sophisticated tooling.  One of its specialties is unscrewing molds for threaded parts.  Thurow says his shop can turn those molds around rapidly, and some custom molder customers send all their thread jobs to Alpha Star. 

In addition to molds for threaded parts, Alpha Star has made its mark with high volume, high precision, faster molds as well as those for very small parts. In fact, about 80% of the molds built at Alpha Star are considered very specialized.  

Some of the parts Alpha Star builds molds for are so small, they are about the size of a grain of margarita salt. 

“We work on jobs that very few U.S. moldmakers can do,” Thurow says.  “The smallest part we made a mold for measured .014” x .018” x .024”, with a wall thickness of .0025.” 

These microscopic parts were to be used by the computer industry and required special microscopes to be utilized in order to achieve perfection within those dimensions.  Many of Alpha Star’s jobs are proprietary.  So much so that it’s a regular practice to require all employees and visitors to sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering the heart of the facility.

In addition to branching into highly specialized and proprietary, if mini, precision mold making, the Thurows have streamlined operations through specialization and cross-training – a trend that has helped many tooling companies cut costs and delivery times.  The shop is divided into two departments.  One is for machining and assembly while the other is for grinding.  Because of the very specialized work they do, Alpha Star has both centerless and thread grinders in-house – something most other shops don’t typically invest in.  Last year saw the addition of a high-speed CNC milling machine and a hole popper that rapidly drills holes ranging .012” - .080” in diameter. 

Molds that traditionally required 26 weeks to build now take Alpha Star 17-18 weeks. 

Thurow says his company has developed a process to help speed up cycle times on traditional molds for customers, too.  He didn’t disclose any details, but says the fastest increase a customer experienced to date is 50% of the previous cycle time. 

Since hitting its low of 16 people in 2001, Alpha Star has since added another three persons to its team – and in the process, gained back the lost ten percent in sales. 

“We have the best crew we’ve ever had,” says Thurow.  “My hat is off to my people because they stepped up when they were needed and even worked overnight to turn some important projects around. 

“They also know that the jobs are not as plentiful as they were before,” he continues.  “With the different nature of the work we do now, we have to keep forging new trails.  We are doing this specialized work because it is something we believe is going to be around for a long time.” 

Alpha Star also builds die casting dies, most of which are for customers that Thurow met while working for his former employer.  The types of dies built include fuel injection dies and those for transmission parts, natural gas meter dies, and dies for automotive parts. 

To find out more about Alpha Star Tool & Mold, call Matthew Thurow at 815-455-2802.