Master toolmakers are few and get offers: HR for plastic mould and tooling makers

A four-cavity tool with two side slides and a lifter comes back from its first trial shot with flash at the shut-offs and a lifter that sticks. One man in the tool room can blue the parting line, find the high spots and re-fit the lifter. He also decides which corrections go to the EDM sinker and which stay at the bench. During lunch his phone rings. It is a tool room across the estate, again. A few months later he is gone, and the next three tools ship late.

Master toolmakers being few and approached often opens the strains listed for plastic mould and tooling makers. Below: the reasons, the price, and what keeps them at the bench.

• Spotting. Prussian blue on the parting line and shut-offs, stoning high spots until the tool closes evenly.
• Fitting moving parts. Slides, lifters, cores and ejector plates, with guide pillars and bushes true.
• Reading a trial shot. Deciding whether a fault needs a weld, a re-cut, extra venting, a polish or a cooling change.
• Electrodes. Planning copper and graphite electrodes for the sinker so fine detail burns cleanly.
• Design input. Draft, undercuts and shrinkage allowance raised with the designer before steel is cut.
• Finishing order. When to harden or nitride the steel, and when the polisher takes over with stones and diamond paste for a mirror or textured face.

Across the cluster, everyone knows these craftsmen by name. Moulders building their own tool rooms want them. Rival tool rooms want them whenever a large export or automotive tool arrives. Some dream of their own workshop and a couple of machines. Meanwhile, at home, every trial correction lands on their bench, their weekly off disappears before deliveries, and their pay sits close to a fitter's. Each of those makes the next phone call easier to answer.

Tools are paid in stages, so a slow correction holds back money as well as delivery. Customers who waited weeks for a tool notice when trials drag. Apprentices lose their teacher halfway through learning, and some follow him. Knowledge of how each past tool was fitted and corrected walks out too, which matters the next time a customer sends one back for repair.

Helper: cleans, deburrs, moves steel, learns measuring and safe machine use.
Apprentice, early stage: drilling, tapping, surface grinding and simple benchwork under a mentor.
Apprentice, later stage: fits plates, pillars and ejector systems with checks by a toolmaker.
Bench fitter: assembles and fits standard tools alone, does routine repairs.
Toolmaker: fits slides, lifters and cores, spots shut-offs, makes trial corrections on standard tools.
Senior toolmaker: leads complex tools from design review to approved trial.
Master toolmaker: decides corrections on any tool, reviews designs, trains and assesses others.
Parallel grades: EDM sinker and wire-cut operators, CNC programmers, polishers, designers.
Every rung: tasks and tolerances spelt out, judged on real tools, signed with a date, and matched to a pay band everyone can see.

Price each rung against neighbouring tool rooms through pay benchmarking for toolmakers and polishers. A craft paid like any other trade gets treated as one by the people who practise it.

1. 1

   Give masters authority over corrections

   They decide how a trial fault is fixed and who does it, instead of carrying every correction themselves.

2. 2

   Put them in design review

   The senior toolmaker reviews each new mould design with the designer before the first cut, so corrections shrink.

3. 3

   Build an apprentice path that lasts years

   A mentor, stipend or pay steps, and checkpoints at each stage. See the apprentice route for mould shops.

4. 4

   Share the tool queue

   One view of tools in progress and expected trials, so hands and overtime are balanced. Workforce planning for tool rooms covers this.

5. 5

   One successor per master

   A senior toolmaker who works alongside the master on complex tools. The succession plan for master toolmakers sets out how.

Matching pay only at resignation teaches everyone that a resignation letter is how raises happen. Better to hold a yearly conversation with each master and senior toolmaker about their work, load and plans, and follow through on whatever comes up. If someone dreams of their own workshop, say so openly. Some shops agree to send overflow work to a former toolmaker, which keeps the relationship and the knowledge close.

A large tool may occupy a team for months, then work thins. Silence in those weeks breeds worry about pay and quiet job hunting. Plan the gaps: repair and refurbishment of customer tools, graphite and copper electrode stock, fixtures, apprentice teaching, and practice on polishing and texturing. Tell people early what the gap will be used for.

• List your master toolmakers and mark who can finish a complex tool alone.
• Count trial corrections on the last few tools and note who did each one.
• Ask each master what the next five years in your shop should look like for him.

Tool rooms sit beside moulding and extrusion on our guide to HR in plastics manufacturing.