The order matters. Everything on every page derives from the machine library and the setup sheet, so a wrong number early is a wrong number everywhere — and it will look exactly as confident as a right one.
This is the step people skip, and it is the one everything else stands on. Libraries has three tables, and each answers a different question.
Screw diameter, maximum stroke, tonnage, and the three unit columns for what that control reads. A press whose control shows stroke in millimetres and pressure in bar keeps doing that whatever the page toggle is set to. Set those three per machine and never think about them again.
The intensification ratio is the one that matters most. It is the number that turns a hydraulic pressure setting into pressure on the polymer. Take it off the nameplate or the builder's manual. Do not guess it, do not take it from a catalog, and do not let a number from a similar machine stand in. An Ri that is wrong by a factor produces pressures that are wrong by a factor, and the app will report them without hesitating.
An all-electric press multiplies nothing — its pressure setting is plastic pressure — so its ratio is 1 and the field is disabled. If you know the machine's maximum plastic pressure but not its maximum hydraulic pressure, enter the plastic figure and leave Ri empty; the app derives what it can and says so.
Platen size, tie-bar spacing, minimum and maximum mold thickness, maximum daylight, ejector stroke, locating bore and maximum mold weight. Straight off the nameplate or the spec sheet.
Maximum daylight is the full platen opening, not the opening stroke. If the spec sheet gives you stroke, add the maximum mold thickness to it.
The panel tells you how many of your presses have enough entered to answer the fit question. A press with gaps does not get a lenient verdict — it gets “waiting”, and says which number it is waiting for.
Screw type, compression ratio and L/D are melt preparation: two presses with the same screw diameter and different screws do not deliver the same melt. Maximum back pressure, maximum screw RPM, and how many fill stages and hold steps the control offers are what a profiled process needs.
Back pressure here is plastic pressure in psi, the same basis as the maximum plastic pressure column. If your control shows back pressure in hydraulic bar, multiply by that machine's Ri first.
Specific gravity and melt density give you shot weight from shot volume. The clamp factor in tons per square inch gives you tonnage. Melt and eject temperatures come from the supplier's data sheet — and the app will tell you when a temperature on the setup sheet sits outside them. Maximum residence time is what turns a barrel that is too big for the shot into a flag rather than a surprise.
One page, entered once, read by every other page. Part number, mold number, material, cavities, cycle time, technician, date.
Enter the process as it runs today on the press that is running it, in that control's own units. Not as you think it should run, and not converted into anything. The app does the converting.
Assembled weight and moving-half weight drive the clamp count, the bolt torque and the lifting hardware on the Mounting page. Bushing seat radius, bushing entry and nozzle reach are properties of the tool, and the app checks them against each machine's nozzle tip.
Beside the projected area and the part volume are two unit selectors, independent of the inch/millimetre toggle. Area takes in², cm² or mm². Volume takes cubic inches, cm³ — cc — or mm³.
They are there because of where the numbers come from. CAD reports a part volume in mm³ and a projected area in mm². A shot size is quoted in cc on one machine and in cubic inches on another. A part volume of 0.22 cu in is 3.60 cc is 3,605 mm³ — the same polymer, three numbers, and nobody holds all three in their head. Enter it in the unit you were given it in. Changing the selector converts what is already there, and the shot weight does not move, because the part did not change.
Across the tie bars, vertical, shut height closed, ejector stroke needed, the opening to unload the part, and the locating ring diameter. These six make the difference between a fit verdict and a shrug.
“Across the tie bars” is the dimension that has to pass between the bars in the orientation you intend to hang it. If the tool can only go in turned ninety degrees, the app will say so — and it treats that as a real change, because it moves the water, the hydraulics and the ejector orientation.
A single injection velocity and one hold pressure is a teaching example. Real processes profile the fill in stages, pack and hold in steps, and often profile back pressure over recovery.
The three tabs are Fill stages, Pack and hold, and Back pressure. Each row shows what you entered, what the polymer sees, what to set on the target press, and how much that setting changes. The change column is often large — a bigger screw needs a much lower velocity for the same flow rate — and that is the point.
Below the tables: screw RPM, decompression and sprue break. Screw speed is matched on surface speed, not RPM, because surface speed is what sets shear in the channel. 120 rpm on a 30 mm screw is 69 rpm on a 52 mm one. If that looks wrong, it is the arithmetic that is right.
A sprue picker or a robot is part of the process. It decides how far the mold has to open, it adds to the cycle, and it has a payload limit that a heavier tool will exceed.
Entry depth, EOAT height and clearance give the opening the arm needs — which is the number the fit check wants in “opening to unload part”. If the two disagree, the app says the daylight verdict is optimistic and by how much.
A robot program does not transfer. Positions are taught against one cell's geometry. What carries across is the requirement: how far the mold opens, how deep the arm goes, what it carries, and whether the ejectors have to be forward first. Record the program name as evidence of what was running, never as something to load on the other press.
From is the press running the job now. To is where it is going. Every figure on the Transfer page, the profile and the Mounting page is for those two presses, so check the pickers before you read anything.
Two new places to put numbers, and they exist because of what strands a transfer at the machine rather than in the toolroom.
On the setup sheet, under Mold services: how many hydraulic core pull circuits the tool needs and at what pressure and flow, whether the cores have to sequence against the clamp, the knockout pattern on the mold, the ejector force it needs, and how far off centre it sits on the platen.
In Libraries, under Services and frame: the same things from the press's side, plus what kind of frame it is, what the coolant supply can deliver, the plasticating rate off the nameplate, and which non-return valve is on the screw.
A mold with two core pulls going into a press with one circuit does not run, and nobody finds out until the tool is hanging in the machine. Same for an ejector plate whose pattern does not match the platen — that is an adapter plate, and an adapter plate is lead time.
Before any process number, the question is whether the tool physically goes in and lets the part out again. Nine checks, both presses at once, and each line names the number that decided it.
If the target press says Does not fit, stop. No process setting changes a tie-bar window. Fix the data if the data is wrong, or pick another press.
A blank field is never a pass. A check with a number missing says which number it is waiting for and where to put it — because a fit screen that reads OK on missing data is worse than no fit screen at all.
The panel below the fit checks. Fit answers whether the steel goes in; this answers whether the mold works once it is in:
A refusal here stops the set-in procedure and the startup checklist, the same as a refusal on fit. A mold with nowhere to plug its core pulls is as stopped as a mold that will not pass the tie bars.
The middle column of the transfer bench is labelled Machine independent. Those are the figures that carry across unchanged: shot volume, volume at transfer, cushion volume, plastic pressures, volumetric fill rate. Everything in the From and To columns derives from them.
If you only ever look at one thing on this page, look at that middle column. If those numbers are right, the transfer is right.
Three kinds of line, and all three are worth reading:
| OK | Checked, and inside the limit. The number that decided it is quoted, so you can disagree. |
|---|---|
| Watch | Either close to a limit, or a decision the app will not make for you — consolidating profile stages, a mold that only goes in rotated, a missing figure it needs. |
| Fix | It will not work as entered. The app says what the limit is and by how much it is exceeded. |
A Watch that says “can't answer yet” is not a soft pass. It means a field is empty and that check did not run.
Print… in the header gives the transfer sheet. The Mounting, Hot runner, Studies, Field forms and Profile pages each print their own. Every sheet carries the safety notice and has somewhere to sign.
Take the profile sheet and the mounting sheet to the press. They are laid out to be read standing up with the old setup sheet in the other hand.
Save to mold on the setup sheet stores the whole thing as one record: the setup page, the profile, the take-out requirements, the mold dimensions and the mounting assumptions. Until you save it, none of it survives closing the page.
Two fields on the setup sheet belong to your quality system rather than to MoldMove. QC / process sheet no. is yours — the app does not issue one, because a parallel numbering scheme is one more thing for somebody to reconcile. Revision is yours too. Both print on every sheet, so a print can be filed.
One mold can carry as many sheets as it has target presses. They are listed by your QC number, revision and the press each one transfers to.
Type the approver's name and press Approve this sheet. The record then carries who approved it, the date, and a fingerprint of every value in it.
The fingerprint is the part that matters. Change any value afterwards and the approval reads EDITED SINCE — on the screen and on the printed paper, which says outright that the print does not match what was approved. Saving an edited sheet drops the approval entirely and tells you it did. An approval that survives an edit is not an approval.
Nothing in the record is stored as a control reading. A transfer position is kept as inches of screw stroke and a hold pressure as plastic pressure, so if a press's control is later switched from millimetres to inches or from psi to bar, the sheet still describes the same process and comes back in whatever that control now shows.
This is not optional and the app cannot do it for you. Print startup checklist on the setup sheet gives you this in full, worked top to bottom, with the numbers already in the right-hand column.
The checklist prints five rungs — 30, 50, 70, 90 and 100% — each with the volume of polymer and the transfer position on the target press that delivers it. The top rung is the sheet's own transfer position, and the part should be 95 to 99% full there on velocity alone with no pack.
The percentages are of what first stage delivers, not of the whole shot. That distinction is not pedantry: the shot includes the cushion, so a ladder measured against the shot puts its top rung inside the cushion, at a position the screw cannot transfer at.
If the part is not 95 to 99% full at the top rung, the transfer position is what moves. Not the pressure.
The last third of the checklist only applies when you are qualifying rather than just starting up: CTQs and gauges listed from the drawing, the sample size agreed with quality before the run, data recorded against shot number rather than pooled, the process window established at high and low melt and high and low fill rate, and deviations written down as deviations.
Capability is left blank on purpose. MoldMove does not compute Cp or Cpk and the sheet says so where the number goes. A checklist that implies a capability study happened is worse than one that leaves the space empty.
If the parts do not come out the same, the process did not transfer — whatever the numbers say. Start with the machine data: an Ri, a screw diameter or a stroke entered wrong is the usual reason.
An approved sheet is never overwritten. Editing one writes a new record that supersedes it; the approved version keeps its content and its approval and gains a pointer forward. The picker labels the old one superseded, opening it says so, and printing it stamps SUPERSEDED across the header. Bump the revision and have the new one approved.
Every printed sheet carries the record id and a fingerprint of its contents, approved or not, so a sheet found in a folder six months later is traceable.
| Owner | Everything, including inviting people and approving sheets. |
|---|---|
| Quality | May approve a setup sheet. May edit. |
| Technician | May edit. May not approve. |
| Read only | May read and export. May not write anything. |
This is enforced on the server, not in the page. An approval carries the signed-in account as well as the typed name, so a name on paper traces back to a login.
Signing up sends a confirmation mail. You can use MoldMove straight away without it — a technician at a press must not be locked out because a mail went to spam — and what confirming unlocks is inviting the rest of your plant. One typo in an address should not become somebody else's plant.
Security in the account strip turns on two-factor: a password plus a six-digit code from an app on your phone. It goes on in three steps, and the third is the one that matters — a code has to be accepted before it is switched on, so if the app is not really holding the secret you find out immediately rather than at the next sign-in. Turning it off needs the password and a code, because an open session on an unattended machine must not be enough.
One device at a time per account. If your session ends mid-job, the message names the account that took it and when — sign in again here to take it back. If that is a surprise, the activity log is where to look.
Lose wifi at the press and the app shows the last records that device saw, with a bar saying so and when. Nothing can be saved until the connection is back, on purpose: a setup sheet that looks saved and is not is worse than one that plainly refused.
Letter or A4, next to the unit toggle. It is remembered per device.
Gate seal, viscosity curve, cavity balance, pressure drop, hot runner setup, machine tests, shot weight logs and defect Pareto. These are the recurring work — they happen at every qualification and every troubleshoot, not just at transfer — and they are the record that the process is what you say it is.
Deleting one gives you thirty days to get it back. Every save, delete and restore is on the plant's activity log with the name of whoever did it.
The Thresholds tab is every house number MoldMove uses, in one place. Where “tight” begins, how full a part should be at transfer, what cushion variation indicts a check ring, when a clamp has no margin left. Twenty-nine of them.
Each one is prefilled with what MoldMove recommends, so the app works out of the box. Tick Custom to use your own number, and untick it to go back to ours — your number stays in the field either way, so trying a value costs nothing and changing your mind back costs nothing. Reset all to MoldMove puts everything back without throwing your numbers away.
A change takes effect immediately, on screen. Set the clamp limit to 20% and the fit panel starts calling a 24% job tight before you have left the page.
| The record | A residence limit and a melt window come off the material data sheet. A cushion tolerance, a velocity linearity and a pressure repeatability come off the machine builder’s published spec. These rows have no MoldMove number at all — putting one on somebody else’s specification would be inventing it. |
|---|---|
| This plant | Your custom value, when the box is ticked. It sits behind the record rather than in front of it: a plant fallback fills in for a press whose spec has not been entered, and never overrides one that has. |
| MoldMove | Our recommendation, when nothing above it applies. |
An owner or a quality account. A technician sees the plant’s thresholds and cannot change them — these are the lines a process is judged against, and moving one is a quality decision rather than a shift decision.
Prints every threshold, the number in force, which tier it came from, and our recommendation beside it, with somewhere to sign and a next-review date. An auditor asking “where did 80% come from” should get a page rather than a conversation.
The sheet says outright that none of them is a standard. They are the lines this app draws, and they need a name on them.
A transfer is an event; a defect is a weekly occurrence. The Troubleshoot tab reads the press, the mold and the material off the setup sheet and asks for the two readings no machine hands over:
Before any process advice, silently: is the shot bigger than the barrel, can the press move polymer fast enough, and — if a pressure drop study is saved for this mold — does filling it need more pressure than the press has.
If any of those fails, that is the whole answer and no process advice is issued at all. Tuning advice for a part that does not fit the press is worse than no advice. The output names the shortfall with a number and says the options are a different machine, a larger gate or a hotter melt — not more injection pressure, because there isn’t any.
Peak plastic pressure against available plastic pressure, at T1:
| At or above T1 | Pressure-limited. The set velocity is not being achieved, so the fill is not velocity controlled and nothing about velocity will help. Raise melt in bounded steps within the supplier’s window, raise mold temperature, or open the gate — and run a pressure drop study to find where the pressure is going. |
|---|---|
| Below T1 | Velocity controlled. The material, the time or the volume is the problem. Next question is where the part is at transfer, against T2. |
If first stage is leaving the part short of T2, the transfer position is the fault and not the pressure. Adding hold to cover a short first stage produces a part whose dimensions are at the mercy of the hold, and it comes back later as flash, sink or cavity-to-cavity variation. The short-shot ladder on the startup checklist prints the positions to step through.
| Machine units | Each press reads what its own control reads. That is the three unit columns in the machine library and it never changes. |
|---|---|
| Page units | The toggle in the header changes what the page derives — volume, weight, area, tonnage, temperature, and the mold and robot dimensions. It does not touch a machine's own settings. |
A field is empty. Every one of those messages names the field and the page it lives on. Nothing in the app treats a blank as a zero or as an approval.