What in the world could these things be??

[DoctorX]

Material found at the bottom of a huge pile of scrap metal salvaged from a tool and die shop that went out of business years ago. Photos taken before entire lot hauled away for scrap. There were thousands of the items in the last photo.

I wonder what they could be.....

Dr. X

[frankfalbo]

Looks like a Dimarzio find? The offset spacers on the bottom match ones I've seen them use, and the metal strip I've seen when they use a Ceramic magnet not big enough to span the gap between the pole pieces. Baseplate is Dimarzio.

[copperheadroads]

I'm thinking the bar shaped objects are forms/dies for assembling bobbins . & some useful face plates
Cool......... that's a great find

[Joe Gwinn]

Image 1 and 2 are front and back of winder mandrels to hold the forbon plates of the shape shown in Image 1. The point is to have the top and bottom plates buried in the recesses, so the #42 or finer wire cannot catch on the edges of the bobbin during fast winding. Note that some plates have hubs and some do not. The two plates in the center column look like a pair.

Images 3-5 appear to be various potting/casting molds.

Image 6 shows a brass baseplate as a flat blank and also after punching and forming.

Image 7 shows some keeper bars in various stages. I assume that these are the same as those in Image 6.

[JGundry]

I wonder if this is the down side to having parts like this made overseas to save a few bucks on a pickup. Your orphaned tooling becomes available to the public basically for free when the US tool and die place goes belly up.

[David King]

It DID all go to the scrap yard right after the photos were taken? A lot of time and effort went into those injection molds. It's going to make some nice, cheap Chinese cars now.

[DoctorX]

From what I understand, what you see in these pictures were bits and pieces of discarded tooling -- either worn out or broken. Nothing in the shop was left behind that would have amounted to much anyway. Aside from the machine tools themselves (lathes, mills, EDM, etc), injection molding machines, grinders, dryers, etc., and rejected plastic, everything else was pushed into a dumpster, or set aside as scrap metal. The original owner of the tool and die shop was a craftsman - his work was beyond excellent. I personally saw examples of his work done years ago. It was flawless. It had to be seen to be believed. More examples and engineering samples he kept of the work he did were uncovered during the shop teardown. All done without the luxury of computers or CNC. When he passed away, his son took over -- but it appears (and this is more than likely not the whole story), that as time went on, the demands of the one large customer outstripped the son's ability to earn a decent profit (the Walmart syndrome) for his work and / or keep up with the workload and / or produce as good a product as his father. Full details are known only to the principals, and they aren't talking. So, in this case, it appears to be a concatenation of logistical and business errors that finally closed the tool and die shop. I can tell you the shop went out with a BANG, and not a whimper. The large customer, it appears, had many critical components made at this one shop, and did not diversify out of (possible) loyalty to the vendor. Once the shop imploded, there was a mad scramble to recover molds, fixtures, etc, and have them retooled at other shops. One could imagine there were a "few" sleepness nights suffered by the production manager of the company in question. The only thing that could be taken away from all of the scrap metal were ideas, and how the molds, fixtures, etc., were designed. One moral of the story might possibly be to make damn sure no single customer provides you with the bulk, if not all, of your income. Ever - no matter what. This shop closure had nothing to do with the work going overseas...not directly, anyway.

More photos of some items that went to a recycler, to come....

[Ronsonic]

As a man of industry I really hate to see stuff like that.

I remember a story about photographer who moved from New England out to the great plains trying to get work sending beautiful photos of rustic old farm steads with abandoned machinery and artfully decayed barns and such to regional magazines. Finally one of the editors met her and demanded to know why she kept sending him those horrible, depressing pictures of places where people went hungry.

Like that. Been to some machinery sales and auctions that were almost painful. To see production tooling go to scrap. Ouch.

[DoctorX]

In this case, the actual production tooling was literally rescued when it became clear that the tool and die shop was unstable and in danger of closing its doors at a moment's notice. In addition, as I understood it at the time, the molds and fixtures were brought over to other injection molders and machine shops for that particular company. The stuff that was left behind was more or less junk. However, the reverse engineering opportunities were...impressive. Even garbage has value to someone. Now, what is kind of interesting, is that this particular company at that time was run pretty tightly, and had the 'just-in-time' manufacturing paradigm fine tuned pretty well. So, you can well imagine the mayhem, madness and panic that must have erupted when their only injection molder / metal fabricator / tool and die shop / go-to guy decided to close its doors with little, if any warning. The original tooling was in danger of being either destroyed (illegal) or thrown out with the trash (also illegal), but that large customer I keep referring to, didn't get where they are today by being slackers. Love 'em or hate 'em, they are a well-oiled, finely tuned machine with (at least back then) some good, highly motivated, and intelligent people at the helm. They got their tooling back in time -- at least what was important.

As an example of their JIT (just-in-time) manufacturing method, if a particular pickup was manufactured and placed into inventory, it was already known how much wire, solder, tape, screws, pole pieces / magnets, packing inserts, packaging, etc was used to make that pickup and the databases were updated accordingly. So, for instance, knowing how many inches of solder would be on a roll of solder, they also knew the length of solder needed to complete that pickup. Each time a pickup was completed, tested, packaged and added into inventory, that length of solder used was subtracted from the total length available, times how many pickups were completed that day. When the amount of raw materials in house ran low and reached a certain point (allowing for lead times to get what they needed from the other suppliers / vendors), orders to restock those depleted raw materials were automatically sent out. How did they do this? They used a "counting scale". They weighed an empty spool of solder (for example) to get the tare weight - the scale could then be set to allow for this, then weighed a length of solder (say 1 inch). That length of solder was the 'unit'. Put the full roll of solder on the scale, and you get the number of pieces of solder and the number of 'expected' pickups that could be completed with that roll of solder. You get the idea.

[DoctorX]

Been to some machinery sales and auctions that were almost painful. To see production tooling go to scrap. Ouch.

The machine dealer who bought the bulk of that particular tool and die shop is still in business today, and often tells me of machine shops / tool and die shops / etc., closing all the time. The difference today is that the number of machine shops left to "go under" is dwindling. As a result, the different dealers that show up to these auctions are bidding up prices on machines that are just worn out, and worth almost zip. However, a good deal of these clapped out manual machines are sold to other countries.

[DoctorX]

-- added more details to previous posts --

[Ronsonic]

Counting scale for solder! Now that is some inventory control.

[David Schwab]

Love 'em or hate 'em, they are a well-oiled, finely tuned machine with (at least back then) some good, highly motivated, and intelligent people at the helm. They got their tooling back in time -- at least what was important.

How old are these photos? I ask because I remember some time ago seeing photos of parts made for DiMarzio that came from their tool and die maker who had gone out of business. It was probably at this forum, but I don't remember.

[DoctorX]

Taken 2 days ago, just before the truck left with the entire load of scrap metal we had in the shop. About 1000 lbs, give or take. All gone.

[DoctorX]

Counting scale for solder! Now that is some inventory control.

A counting scale was used for many items -- mostly hardware. Don't know if they still use it, or if their entire inventory method has changed (doesn't seem likely), but it worked pretty well for them a long time ago.