UFE, Inc.: Gearing Up Profitability

UFE Mold Manufacturing, a Business Unit of UFE Incorporated, builds molds for gears.  Keith Leary, general manager at UFE Mold Manufacturing, says the company builds other types of high precision molds, but one of the company’s special capabilities is building gear molds – and they can do it fast. 

Based in Stillwater, MN, UFE has constructed gear molds for more than 50 years.  Some of the company’s first customers included Eastman Kodak and 3M.  Anyone that can remember the popular 8mm movie projectors should note that the gears inside were produced using UFE molds. 

Today, UFE Mold Manufacturing customers are primarily from the business and office equipment industries.  The company also builds molds for appliances, medical and dental equipment, and automotive components.   All UFE gears are very functional and precise, Leary says. 

“We can build a traditional spur gear mold in 7-10 days,” says Leary.  “Spur gears are the gears that people mostly think about, but we also build molds for other types including worm, helical, bevel, internal and enveloping gears.” 

John Nelson, Senior Project Engineer explains that the company has its own unique mold-base system that helps speed up mold manufacturing.   

“We have our own standard billet bases,” he says.  “We maintain cavity blanks in stock and that helps build the gear molds more quickly." 

UFE’s gear molds are manufactured to meet quality standards from the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA), of which UFE is a member.    

“We developed a capability to meet their standard AGMA 12 level,” Leary explains.  “It was done for one of our largest customers.  That customer placed identical mold orders, globally, in three places including Asia, and our molds were completed first and qualified for production.  We consider it a great feather in the cap of U.S. manufacturing and UFE’s mold building capabilities.”

Special Gears Require Special Skills 

Leary explains that designers and engineers of gears usually require special training in order to ensure the designs will work properly.   

“You need specific information and experience to make high precision gears,” he says, “such as speed of rotation, gear ratio, load data and materials used.  UFE can provide this service for customers.  Plastic is different than steel gears, so there are special design considerations.” 

In fact, UFE offers customers access to specially created gear design software via the company’s website www.ufeinc.com.  There, customers can obtain critical design information that helps produce a first quality product.  In addition, there is also a mold cost estimator on the web site where customers can fill in the materials and data and get an estimate on costs and basic delivery time.  That tool can be accessed at www.ufeinc.com/mold/estimator.html.   

“Those are industry averages,” Nelson stresses, “so UFE will be much lower in actual costs and lead-time.” 

But UFE discovered that the most important factor in producing quality gear molds is the people. 

“We considered adding new equipment recently.” states Leary.  “But we did some testing and discovered that the most important attribute to making good gear molds was having people on board who understand the nuances of gears and know how to use the equipment to achieve what the customer needs.” 

Leary added that the major benefit of new equipment would be faster speed, and the company is looking into investing in some new machines in the future.  Still, UFE can turn around gear molds fast and customers seem happy with the results.   

UFE builds molds for very small gears in the ¼” range (as small as the diameter of a pencil) and as big as 16” in diameter, according to Nelson.  The UFE Mold Manufacturing plant is ISO 9001 certified by UL and was newly upgraded to ISO 9001:2000.  In addition, UFE will take on short-run, low-volume molds made to produce as few as one hundred parts. 

Both Leary and Nelson explain that UFE offers MoldFlow™ analysis capabilities.  When an unusual geometry is involved in the manufacture of the gears, a MoldFlow™ analysis is made so the customer can see exactly how the part will run based on that geometry and the material used.  The company has Unigraphics Solid Modeling software that is compatible with almost any customer’s software so there’s little problem getting down to business designing gears, they add. 

“Process development is another capability we have,” says Leary.  “Nobody builds a mold because they need the mold; they want parts.  We help develop the mold and the process cycle so that parts will meet customer specifications. 

The Stillwater Molding plant can sample all new molds and verify production capability.  The company recently added several electric molding machines to its molding operations.

A Lead-Time Driven Company 

“Six or seven years ago we went through an involved continuous improvement project with an outside consultant,” says Nelson.  “We wanted to really lean out operations and it quickly became a lead-time reduction project.  As a result of that we’ve become a lead-time driven company for our customers.” 

UFE has incorporated a system of outsourcing that allows those lead times to stay virtually constant, ensuring customer delivery as quoted, regardless of the workload.   

“What we do that is unique is we subcontract work if we can’t start the job within 24 hours,” he continues, “and that gives us infinite capacity.”  All of UFE’s subcontractors are located within a reasonable distance in MN, WI and the Chicago area, he says. 

“In addition, we have a quality system that has documented procedures and forms,” Nelson says.  “It’s a series of checkpoints and careful documentation of measurements.  We’ve been doing that since we established our ISO Certification.  UFE is a corporation that is known for high quality production and we implemented a similar system in mold-making to make sure we fall under that corporate quality umbrella.” 

Marketing Manager Dick Boyum notes that UFE’s other mold building capabilities include up to 350-ton press size molds; most of which are high precision with mechanical actions.  The company builds a lot of unscrewing tools, hot runner systems, vertical insert molds and multiple side actions. 

“We have a Singapore mold making operation as well, and that can be a group that we subcontract to,” he says.  Molds built there are primarily built for use in Asia, he notes, and that plant specializes in caps & closures, pen barrels and caps, as well as gears. 

UFE Incorporated started out as an injection molder in 1953, according to Leary, and in the mid 1990’s reorganized into the four current business units.  In addition to Mold Manufacturing, Injection Molding, the largest business unit, specializes in tight tolerance, high volume parts for automotive, appliance and other technology.  The Contract Assembly group does assembly work for OEMs; and Product Engineering provides comprehensive product design services for manufacturers of business electronic and telecommunications equipment, household appliances, vehicle subsystems, and non-invasive medical devices. 

When asked what aspect of UFE Mold Manufacturing’s customer service capabilities is its biggest seller, Leary says, “Our biggest thing would be the lead-time reduction.  We offer customers the benefit of quoting mold deliveries in days instead of weeks. 

“For the gearing business the lead-time reduction is a real strong impetus for keeping the work here [in the U.S.],” he adds.  “The quality is a given, but if we can deliver it in a third or a quarter of the time it gives us an edge.  We have an edge on quality, as well. 

“Literally we can build prototype gear cavities as a production quality cavity,” Nelson continues.  “It allows us to serve a lot of customers that have low volume requirements that may not have the budget for full production molds.” 

He outlined three particularly notable aspects of UFE’s customer service practices.  One is that UFE is continually busy developing the capability to become a more valuable resource to the customer than just “delivering a chunk of steel.”  Second, there is a willingness and ability to get involved on the front end at UFE, especially with medical and dental customers who often find they need a working product to use at a trade show, so fast turnaround and knowledgeable engineering services are required.  The third aspect is the ability to help customers with process development.   

“If something doesn’t work out right at sampling, we can help them make design changes, work on material selection and whatever other adjustments may be needed,” Leary states.  “Most moldmakers can’t do that. We think these practices – combined with the speed to market – have helped us keep work in the U.S.” 

To find out more about UFE Mold Manufacturing, visit the company’s web site at www.ufeinc.com or call 651-351-4273.