I was just thinking about some of the projects we have developed and produced over the last 30 years.
One of the first products we did for injection molding was a computerized backgammon game. A group of inventors came to us back in 1978 and asked us to develop the board and housing for the game. One of the biggest challenges was injection molding a soft keypad. At that time, TPR and TPE were just starting to enter the market. We were able to develop the keypad and ended up producing out of an elastomer called Krayton. At that time, having a product that you played against a computer was pretty cutting edge. This group of inventors
ended up selling the whole product and rights to a firm in Europe and eventually became very wealthy. The picture that is posted on the blog is the original game which is 36 years old!
A different product that comes to mind was another game that included computerized components. In 1983, an inventor approached us with an idea he had. That idea was a dart board that had a computer in it that kept score and some other information. At that time, there were already some dart boards out on the market that had these features but these boards required the use of plastic tip darts. For serious dart throwers, metal tips were the only kind of darts they would throw. These types of games were mainly put in bars and used elsewhere for tournaments. The inventor that approached us had the know how to make the dart board that you could use metal tip darts and had all of the guts that went inside the game already developed. His problem was he needed to produce the board frame that would house everything. To make a mold to produce a dart board frame that was a 20” diameter would be quite expensive. This product was also in the prototype stage and the concept had to be proven before a big investment could be put into the product. Toth Mold/Die Inc. did come up with a unique idea for injection molding the frame. A small mold was made to produce segments of the dart board. If you look at the picture, there is one part that has the inner diameter attached to it. The other part is the same cavity minus the inner diameter which was cast with an interchangeable insert. In order to make one complete board we injection molded one part with the inner diameter and nine parts minus the inner diameter. These parts all interlocked to create a full 20” diameter with a design developed by Toth Mold/Die Inc. Being able to produce the completed part using this design reduced the injection mold and injection molding cost by 75%. This inventor was able to prove the concept and ended up selling his product to one of the largest dart board manufacturers in Canada. We thrive on challenges here at Toth Mold/Die Inc. and are thrilled when our inventors meet/exceed their goals and have success with their newly developed products.