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Source | Weber Manufacturing Technologies Inc.

Weber Manufacturing Technologies Inc. (Midland, Ontario, Canada), Nickel Vapor Deposition (NVD) specialist will be exhibiting at CAMX 2019, September 24 – 26 in Anaheim, California where Weber will showcase a live NVD out-of-autoclave demonstration for a Class A automotive body panel, demonstrating the tool’s rapid heating and cooling capabilities in Booth U49.

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Visitors will be able to view firsthand the mold ramping quickly up to temperature and back to uniform mold surface temperature. Conformal heating capabilities will allow users faster cycle times. 

Tom Schmitz, Business Manager for Weber Manufactruing, claims NVD can produce nickel 20 times faster than electroforming. NVD is said to produce a more uniform shell thickness, is good at replicating finely detailed mold textures and surfaces, produces negligible residual stress and is weldable. A new NVD mold can be fabricated from an existing deposition mandrel in just two to three weeks and can be 3-30 mm thick.

Founded in 1962, Weber Manufacturing identified a need for higher quality nickel shells. Originally, conventional nickel shells were made by electroforming; a slow, galvanic process in which a master shape is placed in a tank as a cathode and nickel is gradually plated over many weeks. In 1989, Weber established its Nickel Tooling Technology (NTT) Division and its own NVD operation followed by selling the first shell to Schock in 1991.

Today Weber has positioned itself as a fabricator of large, high-quality tools of not only nickel but steel, aluminum and Invar — notably, for very large composites molding processes. 

Weber Manufacturing is a fully integrated mold manufacturer in Aerospace, Automotive Interiors and Exteriors, and Home and Building products. Specialties include building tooling for spray, slush, compression, injection, RTM, infusion and autoclave processes. The in-house model shop develops Master Models made from leather wrap or select wood grains, and can also provide cost-effective models in silicone, epoxy and urethane tooling board. 

Weber is currently the only fully integrated NVD custom mold maker operating out of the world’s largest NVD facility. The facility is capable of producing high precision nickel shapes in 99.98% pure nickel for molds or complex nickel components, including fine surface details, grains and textures. Tools made using NVD nickel shells offer superior quality, many flexible design options and critical advantages not available with any other tool-making technology.