Liberty Molds Turns 40

Four Decades of Building Tools That Work

Forty years is a long time to do anything. Marriages rarely last that long. Restaurants come and go in five. But Liberty Molds has been building injection molds in Michigan since 1986 and we are not slowing down.

We started small. A few machines, a small crew and a LOT of coffee. Back then, moldmaking was done with manual mills and a whole lot of feel. You learned by doing and you learned fast because the customer needed parts yesterday. That same attitude still runs through our shop today.

How the Industry Has Changed

CAD was barely a thing when we opened our doors. Designers had to draw on paper and machinists read those drawings to cut the steel by hand. A complex mold took weeks or months. Today, we use digital models and CNC equipment but the goal has not changed. Build a tool that runs hard and fills right every time.

What has also changed is where molds come from. In the 90s and 2000s, more work started going overseas. Cheap prices pulled a lot of business away from U.S. shops. But here is what we noticed. Those same customers kept coming back to us after a mold from overseas cracked or wore out. They learned that a low price on day one does not mean low cost over five years.

What Has Not Changed in Forty Years

Our people. Some of our moldmakers have been here for twenty or thirty years. They know the steel. They know the machines. They know what a good tool feels like when it comes off the line. You cannot buy that kind of knowledge from a catalog.

Our approach has stayed the same too. We build molds that we would want to run on our own floor. That means the right steel, the right cooling and the right fit. No shortcuts. No guessing.

A Few Things We Have Learned

Over forty years, you pick up a few lessons:

• A mold that ships late costs the customer more than a mold that costs a bit more upfront

• Good records matter. We keep steel certs, heat treat logs and CAD files for every tool we have built

• Answering the phone matters more than anything else. A customer with a broken mold does not want a voicemail

• You treat people right and they stay. That goes for employees and customers both

The Next Forty Years

We are not going anywhere. The shop keeps running and the mills keep cutting steel. We still answer the phone on a Thursday afternoon if a customer has a problem. Some things do not need to change.

If you have been with us for one year or thirty, thank you. We appreciate the work, the trust and the chance to keep building tools that do the job. Here is to the next forty.