This webinar breaks mold design down into its three essential pillars — Flow, Thermal and Mechanical. Each pillar will be covered by four leading mold builders, with each sharing their decision-making strategies for comparing common design choices, from gating and cooling to steel selection and ejection strategies. The webinar helps both new and experienced designers establish a shared language and consistent approach to designing robust, efficient tooling.

Industry veterans will appreciate insights from peers who’ve lived these challenges, while newer designers and toolmakers will gain clarity on how critical components fit together — and why certain decisions matter more than others. This webinar won’t attempt to cover everything, but it will deliver high-value fundamentals, real examples and the perspectives that drive better design choices.

Pillar 1
Flow Fundamentals: Using a Matrix to Guide Gating, Filling and Venting Decisions
Designing for smooth material flow is the foundation of every successful mold. This session introduces a practical matrix for comparing gating options, evaluating fill behavior and balancing venting needs based on part geometry and resin characteristics. Attendees will learn how to use the matrix to visualize trade-offs in complexity, cycle time and part quality, making flow-related decisions more consistent and defendable across projects and teams.

Pillar 2
Thermal Control Essentials: Applying a Cooling and Steel Selection Matrix for Better Performance
Thermal management drives cycle time, dimensional stability and surface quality—but decisions around cooling strategies and steel selection are often based on intuition. This session demonstrates how to build and use a matrix to compare straight cooling, baffles, bubblers, conformal designs and thermal materials. The discussion also explores how steel grades, hardness and coatings fit into the thermal pillar, giving designers a clear framework for optimizing heat removal and mold durability.

Pillar 3
Mechanical Robustness: A Matrix Approach to Ejection, Mechanics, and Mold Reliability
The mechanical pillar covers everything from ejection methods to moving components and mold actions—areas where poor decisions can compromise reliability and maintenance. This session presents a matrix for evaluating ejection strategies (pins, sleeves, lifters, stripper plates) alongside mechanical features that affect wear, alignment and service life. Attendees will see how the matrix helps compare robustness, risk, cost and complexity to deliver more reliable and maintainable molds.