Part of TCI Group · UK design, UK manufacturing capability, since 2019
Candles, soap, resin homeware, bakery trays, chocolate shells, precast concrete, wearables and electrical parts. Different industries, but the same four questions. This is our sector view: real jobs and the reasoning behind each decision.
How to read this
A mould does not care which industry you work in. It cares about what you pour into it, how often you use it, how much detail needs to survive, and who opens it. Sector language still matters, though, because a candle maker and a precast yard can describe exactly the same problem in completely different words.
We've organised this page around who's asking. For each sector, we highlight the part that usually turns out to be most difficult, which is rarely the focus of the initial enquiry. Customers are described by sector rather than named, deliberately.
If you do not see your work here, that does not mean we cannot do it. Most of what we receive is a variation on one of these six.
Six sectors
What each one asks for first, and what really matters in the end.
You may ask for a mould that matches a shape you have drawn. What you actually need is draft and a surface finish chosen around a shrinking wax, plus a hardness soft enough to release a pillar without denting the top. This is usually a cast or vacuum cast tool.
Cast moulds
You may be asking for multiple cavities to raise output. In practice, the priority is a mould face that can withstand caustic batter or hot resin for the run you are planning. Cavity count comes second to grade selection.
Multi-cavity tooling
You may ask for a shape. What you actually need is a food-grade platinum-cure grade, declarations attached to the order, and a tray that is stiff enough for a production operator to handle rather than a pastry chef.
Food-contact moulds
You may ask for a copy of an existing detail. In practice, you often need a decision about abrasion against the detail and, because the original is worn and no drawing exists anywhere, reverse engineering.
Polyurethane tooling
If you're asking for a price per part, the shape needs to be frozen first. Pressed and injected parts are inexpensive per piece but costly to change once the tool is cut. That's why the design decisions need to be agreed before tooling begins.
Compression moulding
You may ask for a prototype quickly. But what you actually need is real parts in the real material. That is different from a printed model that only looks right.
Prototype toolingWorked jobs
The details are anonymised, but the difficulty of each one is real.
A very small raised feature can be critical on an aerospace subcontract part. At that scale, a trapped bubble does not simply mark the feature; it removes it. That is why the job went under vacuum for both mould and cast.
Read the job
For a natural form with hundreds of overlapping undercuts, no rigid tool can open around it. A brushed silicone glove inside a rigid mother mould was the only approach that came apart successfully.
Read the job
A thin cast patch curled at the corners, so the mould was rebuilt on a rigid base. The issue lay in the mould construction, not the material, which is the common case.
Read the job
Move a printed logo into moulded relief. Print wears off a strap, while moulded relief does not. The mark must be drafted to withstand thousands of pulls without filling or feathering.
Read the jobAnd three more
Soft silicone ear pads were moved onto a compression tool. We moved the parting line away from the sealing lip, so the wearer would not feel it, and settled the hardness using real parts rather than relying on a datasheet. Read the job.
A hand-modelled master inhibited the platinum cure, leaving a tacky mould face. Identifying the cause is just as important as remaking the mould, so the same problem does not happen with your next master. Read the job.
This patisserie tray performed well in the oven but failed under the cleaning regime. Increasing the hardness and wall thickness reduced flexibility during demoulding, but delivered a much longer tool life. Food-contact moulds.
The point
Across all six sectors, what you are buying is the same result: the tenth part, the hundredth part and the thousandth part coming out the same as the first. The mould is simply the means of achieving it.
That is why we ask about the less glamorous end of the process: who demoulds it, how often they do so, what shift it happens on, and what they clean it with. A mould that is a pleasure to use on the bench but gets torn on a Friday afternoon production line has not solved anything.
That is also why we prefer having a sample of the part in front of us rather than only a specification. The part shows us what the process is really like.
Straight to it
Here, you can explore the routes and groundwork behind the examples above.
When one pinhole is a reject, degassed pours are the route behind aerospace and fine-relief jobs.
Vacuum castingBrushed skins with a rigid mother mould are made for deep relief and shapes that no rigid tool will release.
Hand-made mouldsA dependable choice for candle, resin, plaster and giftware casting, made with the split line you choose.
Cast mouldsWhat happens to your wearables or component job once annual quantities justify steel
Injection and LSRThis is where we settle flatness, draft and split-line decisions before anything is cut.
CAD and DFMSector to service
If one of the six sounded like you, this is the next page to read.
Food-grade platinum-cure grades are used, with declarations kept against the order and batch records retained.
Food-contact mouldsAbrasion-resistant tooling for concrete and cast stone, prioritising tool life over fine detail.
Polyurethane toolingWe measure and model your worn or obsolete part, correct what needs correcting and keep a record.
Reverse engineeringDevelopment tooling lets you make real parts in the real material before you commit to production tooling.
Prototype toolingWe run the tool for you, and you can buy the parts you need, from a single piece to steady weekly batches.
Low-volume productionOne group, four specialisms
One shared engineering team, one workshop and four specialisms. That means the tooling knowledge behind a precast yard is also available to a chandler with a single product.
Not listed?
From props and signage to model making, dental and medical-adjacent work, packaging inserts, and sealing parts for machinery no one makes any more, the same four questions guide every project: what goes in it, how many you need, what detail matters, and who takes it out.
Send your part or a photograph of it to the partnership team. If it's not something we should be doing, we'll say so plainly rather than quoting you for the wrong route.
At a glance
Which route suits your quantity
Swipe to see the whole diagram
Ready to start?
Send us a drawing, photograph or sample. We'll come back with a mould strategy, a material recommendation and a price.
Real people, a real workshop
No call centre and no middlemen. When you contact TCI Mouldings, you speak to the team who design, build and check your mould.
Thomas LaneManaging Director
George PrestonDesign & Project Manager
Kelly BallingerHead of Partnerships
Jim AndertonProduction Manager
TheodoreEmployee Welfare