Our process

The mold-making process your parts deserve.

Every program starts with a design review meeting — a discovery process, not a sales call. Be hands-on or hand it over: either way the same five steps carry your part from a drawing to a repeat order.

Sheet 04 / 12
Five steps

  1. Design review

    The first meeting learns your requirements and helps you decide between design and tooling options — before anyone quotes steel.

    Discovery, not commitment

  2. Mold-friendly engineering

    The core team reviews your part design: no undercuts, uniform wall thickness matched to the resin, with equal attention to function and appearance.

    DFM before the first cut

  3. Tooling

    The mold is built in the Cobourg tool shop — or, when the budget calls for it, brought in "green" from a partner source and finished on-site to Protoplast's own standards.

    QC-10 · P20 · SP300 · H13 · Moldmax

  4. First shots

    Accurate, repeatable parts on the first or second shots off the tool — closer to quality parts sooner, not weeks of waiting for good ones.

    Critical dimensions verified

  5. Production, monitored

    Real-time monitoring and in-process vision watch every cycle, so drift is caught at the press instead of at inspection or in your receiving dock.

    SPC on automotive programs

Protoplast designer working on a part model at a CAD station
Design review — CAD station
Mold steels
QC-10 · P20 · SP300 · H13 · Moldmax
Good parts
First or second shots off the tool
Change orders
Handled across the floor, same building

Producing accurate, repeatable parts is as much art as science.

Protoplast — Our Process

Three-plate shower head mold running at Protoplast, from their own video
Three-plate shower-head mold — from their Molding Division video

Why customers push

Hard parts made the shop better.

Protoplast credits its own customers for the shop's range: new materials, strict design requirements, new price points. Each solved challenge opened the door to the next program.

That is how a Cobourg tool shop ended up over-molding soft seals for GM, printing bank PIN pads and building three-plate molds for shower heads — the same five steps, run honestly, over four decades.

Step one is free

Book the design review. Bring the ugly drawing.

A part sketch, a resin idea and a volume guess are enough to start the conversation.

(905) 372-6451 info@protoplast.com 210 Willmott Street, Unit #2, Cobourg, ON K9A 4K8