Meet Victor: putting our O Gauge container tooling to the test

The full range of Dapol O Gauge containers is available now from your preferred Dapol stockist. The finished models were produced by our partner factory in the Far East, but the story of their tooling has taken a journey of its own. 

 When the project began, our UK tooling room was not yet fully operational. We arranged for the tools to be made in the Far East, intending to bring them back to the UK after the first production run. As it happened, the tools arrived at Dapol at around the same time as the finished containers. 

Our in-house tooling team gave the tools an initial inspection and a big thumbs up. The first was then fitted to our VR2500HES-678 injection moulding machine. We call him Victor. He’s our largest machine, about the size of a small caravan, so he’s more than up to the job of handling these sizeable O Gauge tools. Victor will be used for all of our O Gauge containers. 

We’ve now produced a short test run of around 200 mouldings using the 20ft container tool, giving the team a chance to put it through its paces here in the UK. Later this week, we’ll be trying out the 45ft moulds too.

Ian, one of our moulding machine operators, has been producing and inspecting the first 20ft container mouldings made here in the UK. It’s a hands-on process: each moulding cycle is started manually, and every container is removed from the machine by hand. Ian checks each one for defects, including any excess plastic, known as flash, before placing it in the cooling row.  

A spacer is carefully fitted into the underside of each container while it cools. The containers remain in the row for 15–20 minutes, giving the plastic time to cool and undergo its expected shrinkage. The spacer helps prevent the container from warping during this process. 

Once it has cooled, the spacer is removed and the container is boxed for storage and future use.

In the image below you can see the mouling still on the travelling part of the tool waiting to be removed, it takes Victor 48 seconds to inject the plastic, cool the moulding and eject it so that Ian can place it in the cooling down row.

Dapol: Manufacturing in the UK since 1983

At Dapol we are proud to be continuing our efforts to produce more and more of our product range here in the UK. We can all help support Uk manufacturing!