MoldMaking Technology: The Magazine Dedicated to Mold Design, Build and Management
MoldMaking Technology, known across its industry as MMT, is a trade magazine and online news source published by Gardner Business Media in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the people who design, build, repair and manage molds. A mold is the precision tool from which plastic parts are injection-molded by the millions, and moldmaking is a specialised branch of manufacturing that combines engineering, machining, metallurgy and business management. MMT was founded in 1998 to serve that niche exclusively, and its long-standing editorial promise is coverage from the front end of mold design through to first shot — the moment a finished mold first produces a part. Its website, moldmakingtechnology.com, carries technical articles, shop profiles, product news, videos and the MMT Chats conversations, while its print magazine and its Leadtime Leader Awards give the North American moldmaking community a shared reference point and a benchmark for excellence.
Founded in 1998 to Give Moldmaking Its Own Publication
The idea for MoldMaking Technology came from founder Joe Prischak, who, with partner Gary Orfe, planned a magazine devoted to the unique challenges of mold manufacturing. Founding editorial director Christina Fuges, who was at the planning table in 1997, later recalled the reasoning: an industry utterly dependent on accurate, repeatable and efficient technology throughout the design and build stages deserved a publication of its own. The premier issue appeared in April 1998. At launch the magazine defined a moldmaker as a toolmaker knowledgeable in every aspect of the process from mold design to first shot, and it organised its coverage under the tagline Engineer, Build, Repair. Success stories were central to the founding philosophy. In an industry where shops had traditionally guarded their methods, MMT published how real companies solved real problems, and its founders believed that openness changed the culture: techniques and strategies that had been secrets became shared knowledge that raised standards across the trade.
Sold to Gardner Business Media in 2004
After about seven years of growth under its founder, MoldMaking Technology was sold in 2004 to Gardner Business Media, the family-owned publisher based in Cincinnati. Gardner began in 1928 as Gardner Publications with Modern Machine Shop, founded by Don G. Gardner, and remains a privately held family business with members of the third, fourth and fifth generations active in the company. The acquisition had a clear industrial logic. Gardner had bought Plastics Technology magazine in 2000 and already published Modern Machine Shop, which meant it covered both sides of moldmaking — metalworking and plastics processing — and a dedicated moldmaking title connected the two. The meeting that led to the sale came through the Plastics Industry Association, where Gardner's Rick Kline Sr., then company president, learned from MMT co-owner Gary Orfe that the magazine might be available. Kline later recalled that he and Prischak, a self-made founder, found common ground in their views on people and business, and reached agreement quickly. Rick Kline Sr. is now chairman and chief executive, Rick Kline Jr. serves as president, and Melissa Kline Skavlem serves as chief operating officer.
Design, Build, Manage: The Editorial Framework
As the industry evolved, so did the magazine's framing. A decade after launch, MMT updated its guiding phrase to Design, Build, Manage, with a refreshed logo in 2008, to reflect the moldmaker's complete involvement in the manufacturing process. The editors explained that the mold shop itself had been transformed into a mold manufacturing facility concerned with both the business and the technology of designing, building, repairing, maintaining and managing molds, and the editorial direction followed that reality. The core commitment did not change: the magazine remained dedicated entirely to the needs of management, engineers and supervisors in moldmaking, from front-end design to mold repair. In practice that means a reader can move from a technical article on mold materials or cooling to a management piece on quoting, scheduling or workforce strategy, and both are treated as part of the same professional discipline. The framework also organises the website, where topics such as Leadership, Automation and Manage channel the mix of shop-floor technique and business practice.
Technical Coverage: Machining, EDM, Materials and More
MMT's technical articles address the processes by which molds are actually made and kept running. Coverage includes high-speed and hard machining, wire and sinker electrical discharge machining, graphite milling, mold design and engineering, mold flow analysis, hot runner systems, mold steels and alloys, surface treatments, and repair and maintenance practice. Material selection is a recurring theme: the magazine has asked its Leadtime Leader honourees to weigh criteria such as strength and shot life, thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, durability and machinability, and to assess innovations in steels and alloys. Other coverage follows additive manufacturing for mold components, automation and lights-out machining, digital simulation, thermal management, and the integration of molding machines and automation with the mold itself. Conference sessions promoted through the magazine have tackled subjects such as why plastic parts warp, plastic part production failures, tracking molds in the cloud and the impact a mold has on the molding process. The aim is practical: information a shop can apply to the next tool it builds.
Shop Profiles and Success Stories
From its first issues, MMT built its identity on detailed profiles of mold shops and the people in them. Anniversary coverage in 2018 revisited companies and individuals profiled in 1998 to show how they had grown, and the format remains central: how a shop organises its design office, which machines it bought and why, how it trains apprentices, how it cut lead time, and how it wins and keeps customers in markets such as automotive, medical, packaging, consumer products and appliances. Profiles of winning Leadtime Leader shops illustrate the range: one honouree cut typical lead times from twelve weeks to six through hard milling, trained staff and full-service sampling before shipment; another built its strategy on automation, dedicated employees and a lean approach that produced an average four-week lead time. MMT Chats extends the profiling into conversation, featuring leaders who describe paths from garage tinkering to industry innovation. For a trade of largely small and mid-sized family businesses, these stories function as peer benchmarking that owners can measure their own operations against.
The Leadtime Leader Awards
The magazine's best-known institution is the Leadtime Leader Awards, a competition it has run since 2003 to honour mold builders that best demonstrate innovation, efficiency, quality and commitment. Entrants are assessed on lead time and delivery performance, current and projected sales growth, investment in technology, innovation in business strategy, manufacturing efficiency, commitment to workforce training and development, industry involvement, customer satisfaction and the completeness of their submission. Judges are selected from customer-side companies — original equipment manufacturers and molding firms in automotive, medical, packaging, consumer goods, appliances and electronics — plus industry consultants; competing mold manufacturers are never asked to judge, and judging is anonymous. The prize is deliberately promotional, because recognition is valuable to a winning shop: the cover of MoldMaking Technology, a full feature in print and online, a video filmed at the shop and a guest spot on MMT Chats, with further exposure through other Gardner brands. The awards marked their 15th anniversary in 2018 and two decades of winners were celebrated at PTXPO in 2026, evidence of a programme that has become a hall of fame for North American moldmaking.
Events, Anniversaries and Industry Gatherings
MMT's calendar has long been tied to industry events where mold builders meet customers and suppliers. Leadtime Leader Awards were for years presented at Amerimold, the trade show and conference for the moldmaking sector, where the mold conference track ran sessions led by industry experts and the awards evening became a social fixture of the event. More recently, Leadtime Leader celebrations have featured at PTXPO, Gardner's plastics technology exposition, where MMT coverage highlighted digital simulation, hot runner and thermal management advances, additive manufacturing, mold steels, proactive maintenance and workforce collaboration. The magazine marked its own milestones publicly: its 10th anniversary in 2008 with a year of retrospective features, its 20th in 2018 with a special April issue recreating the premier cover, interviews with its founder and advisory board, and updates on shops first covered in 1998. These anniversaries are more than nostalgia; by comparing the state of the industry in 1998 with later years, MMT gives readers a longitudinal view of how technology, global competition and shop practice have changed.
Gardner Business Media and the Manufacturing Portfolio
MMT benefits from, and contributes to, one of North America's largest manufacturing media portfolios. Gardner Business Media describes itself as the leading publisher of integrated media for durable goods manufacturing, with primary markets in CNC machining and metalworking, plastics processing, mold manufacturing, composites, finishing and automotive product development. Its portfolio spans magazines, trade shows, technical conferences, digital media and market intelligence, including the Gardner Business Index and capital spending surveys, plus research such as the Industrial Buying Influence report, which examines how manufacturing buyers make purchase decisions. For MMT readers, the connection means mold coverage can draw on machining expertise from Modern Machine Shop and processing expertise from Plastics Technology, while MMT's own audience of mold shop owners, engineers and supervisors offers suppliers a precisely defined market. Brand reports from the Gardner era show the scale of that audience, with the magazine publishing multiple issues a year, two e-newsletters including MMT Insider and the MMT Blog, and a website drawing tens of thousands of users a month.
Workforce, Leadership and the Next Generation
A persistent theme in MoldMaking Technology is people. Moldmaking depends on highly skilled toolmakers whose training takes years, and the magazine covers workforce development as a business-critical topic: how shops recruit, how they partner with schools, how they structure apprenticeships, and how experienced staff pass knowledge on. Its anniversary coverage included a look at workforce development advances since 1998 and updates on schools covered in its first issues, and its 30 Under 30 recognition highlights next-generation leaders taking on financial strategy, operations and innovation roles in mold shops. Leadership coverage argues that digital transformation in moldmaking succeeds or fails on people rather than technology alone. For shop owners facing retirements, skills shortages and pressure to automate, this human coverage is as practical as any machining article. It also reinforces the magazine's founding wager: that an industry which shares its methods and celebrates its best shops will be stronger than one that keeps secrets. More than twenty-five years after its premier issue, MMT remains the publication built on that wager.
