The Tool Crib works with many manufacturing facilities here in the Southeastern US providing standard tooling from our suppliers. What you may not know is that we provide almost as much custom tooling for specific projects. One of the things we specialize in is Mapal PCD tools for machining aluminum. The Tool Crib is very proud to be the largest distributor of Mapal tools in the country. Mapal is based in Aalen Germany with production facilities in 21 countries worldwide. Among the many capabilities they offer, Mapal is the leading manufacturer of PCD tooling in the world. Mapal PCD production is based in Pforzheim Germany in a state of the art production center where they employee over 500 people. They also have production here in the US at two facilities, one in Port Huron, Michigan and the other in Fountain Inn, South Carolina.
PCD tools that they make include boring tools, milling products, reamers, and combination tools to name just a few. Certainly, not every shop or production facility can benefit from using PCD. But, if your plant makes products from aluminum and they have very tight tolerance, finish requirements or large production numbers you can see huge benefits. We specialize in working with Mapal to develop combination tooling that can produce multiple features on a part in one operation. PCD tools can be very cost effective over their life because they typically last a long time and they can be rebuilt over and over. We have many tools in production that are years old and have produced millions of parts.
The Tool Crib and Mapal have the experience needed to supply these types of tools. Combination tools can be very challenging to develop. Our goal is always for the tool to work immediately when it is placed in the spindle. It is also important that we know what to look for during the design phase so that we avoid hidden issues that can ruin our customer’s tool runoff test. If you have a project coming up and would like to see what Mapal and The Tool Crib can do for you please contact us.
