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Your view of what’s most important in injection molding may depend on whether you come at it from the toolmaking side or the process engineering side. You’ll have ample opportunity to explore both sides at the Molding 2021 Conference, coming up Sept. 21-23 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill., near Chicago O’Hare Airport. It’s one of your first chances in more than a year to interact in person and   face to face with experts in primary machinery, controls, auxiliary equipment, tooling, materials, and “smart factory” networking, among other topics.

Conformal cooling is one innovative technology to be discussed at the Thursday morning General Session of the Molding 2021 Conference. (Photo: Autodesk Moldflow)

In recent blogs, we previewed the first two morning General Sessions on Green Molding and Digital Manufacturing, as well as the three afternoon breakout sessions on Tues., Sept. 21 and on Wed., Sept. 22. Here is a summary of what you can expect in the final morning’s General session on “Tooling & Cooling,” Thurs., Sept. 23. This will, in fact, be the second session of the conference to focus on tooling—one of the Wednesday afternoon breakout sessions covers “Tooling, Hot Runners & IML.” But on Thursday we’ll also give the processing side it’s due, since mold cooling is part of the process.

You’ve heard about DFM—Design for Manufacturing? Well, what about Design for Maintenance? That intriguing concept will kick off the Thursday morning session, presented by Canon Virginia. You’ll also hear about how innovative concepts like conformal cooling and infrared thermal cameras are affecting mold design, presented by A-1 Tool. Other tooling-related topics will include the productivity benefits of mold surface treatments, from Bales Metal Surface Solutions; how to eliminate costly pitfalls in project management, from Progressive Components; and you won’t want to miss “The Toolmaker’s Guide to Additive Manufacturing” from Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies.

On the cooling side, learn about adiabatic fluid coolers, a hybrid alternative to cooling towers, from Universal Dynamics (Unadyn); and critical thermal and hydraulic load analyses for proper cooling-system selection, presented by Frigel.

For all the details, including how to register and hotel accommodations, visit the Molding 2021 Conference website.