Paul Brown likes shaping his own destiny. He makes ceramic molds to order.
"One reason that I work with molds is to be able to work at home and still
be able to meet interesting people such as artists, sculptors and businesspeople,"
he says.
"This turned into a wage earner after my first project and I'm still
looking for the best way to fit it in. I like working by myself at home, though
it produces its own problems with zoning and employment regulations."
Brown is a self-taught mold maker and continues to learn by reading and
by watching others. He also learns by examining molds made by others. That
habit got him involved with a mysterious stacking mold.
"I was given several sections of a stacking mold and given the task to
figure out how they were made. A stacking mold consists of sections with the
forming areas at both sides, which can be stacked one on top of another about
10 high," he says. All original details were lost, so Brown had to figure
it out himself.
"I went over several paths in a search for a solution. As each played out,
they went nowhere. Then, putting ego aside, I played detective and let the
mold sections tell me the story. Looking carefully at the mold sections, I
found some very small marks that could be identified and were the same on
all the molds. This told me what parts of the mold were made by the same master
mold.
"Given the odd shape of the mold sections, this led me to the solution,
which was a very simple two-part master mold. The simplicity of this mold
humbled me when I recalled how hard I tried to figure it out!"
David Bortolotti owns a mold design shop. He once designed a hood latch
for the 1997 Chrysler Jeep.
"I had a lot of input on how the part looked and operated," he says.
"It was more on the lines of actually developing the part assembly for
Chrysler, not just creating the mold for an already designed part. When designing
automotive parts, you're doing it three to five years in advance of the
actual car. So I get to see these vehicles years before they're actually
released to the public.
"I got to see the now-famous Dodge Viper before anybody knew such a car
was going to exist, and became involved in designing a mold for the driver's
side airbag cover on that car."
A co-op program during her last year of high school got Candice Mailloux
thinking about a career in mold making. "I took and enjoyed the AutoCAD courses
in high school then had my co-op at [a tool and die making shop]. They were
really good to me, they showed me how to work all the machines and really
prepared me for a career."