This was a BIG problem for us...

Creating the perfect LTT Screwdriver has not been easy... and unfortunately it is not quite done yet.

We'll have more info about a release date in 2022, but to keep y'all up to date Kyle wanted to give some insight into one of the biggest recent challenges we've had with our injection molding process.

Kyle Tharratt
Well-vented Manufacturing Engineer

The road to releasing the LTT screwdriver has been a long one and we continue to face various challenges, most recently being a minor failure in one of our injection molds. Basically, one of our vents got plugged partway through a production run of our bit clips, causing some minor cosmetic defects.

Before I explain exactly what happened, let’s do a quick & dirty rundown of injection molding. If you want some visuals to get a more clear understanding, check out this breakdown on Aire Plastics' site: https://www.aireplastics.com/basic-injection-molding-process/ (we have no affiliation with them at all, we just thought their diagram was pretty informative).

As the name suggests, injection molding is the process of injecting molten thermo plastic into a mold to form a plastic part. In its simplest form, two halves of a mold are precisely carved, and in production are pressed together to form the cavity which is filled with plastic. Once cooled to a point that it will hold its shape but not stick to the mold or the ejector pin, the part is ejected. While there are a variety of factors that go into making a “good” part (each one could probably be a topic for a full newsletter itself...) we only had an issue with one aspect of this mold - venting.

Basic laws of physics state that two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. When plastic gets injected into the cavity of a mold, the air that's in that cavity has to go somewhere, so mold makers have to build in a way for air to exit from the cavity of a mold through EXTREMELY small vents. And when we say extremely small, we're talking about as small as one or a few THOUSANDTHS of an inch.

Improper venting (or in our case the total failure of a vent) can cause issues ranging from minor cosmetic defects all the way to structural failures in a part. This is a result of air - which would have otherwise been removed - remaining in the mold while the plastic solidifies. This picture from ecomolding.com illustrates this perfectly.

In our case, the resulting defect was so minor that most people would never notice it. But when you're looking at these parts as closely as we are, it's a pretty obvious issue. When we saw the defects, we knew we had to fix the mold and re-make those parts before we would be happy releasing this product to all of you.

Luckily, most of the defect parts are a single color and haven't been over-molded or assembled with any other type of material, so they can be recycled (ground up and used for new injection molded parts in the future). There are a bunch of sub-assemblies that were put together, and we plan to find a way to use those in the future in final screwdrivers - maybe we'll keep them for internal use here at the office, or sell them as an "imperfect" version of the screwdriver through lttstore.

Obviously that would come with a pretty significant discount if we did offer it. And, as always, if we do wind up doing something like that, reading our future newsletters will be the best place to find out about it.

Hopefully that gives you a bit of insight on just one of the many challenging parts of creating something like the LTT Screwdriver. Our team is hard at work on this and many other super cool items.

2022 is gonna be an absolutely huge year for lttstore, and LMG as a whole. We're glad to have y'all here for the ride.

Nick
COO
lttstore.com / Creator Warehouse
@nicklmg