← Back to Products › Molds — Tracking & Monitoring

Every mold located. Every shot counted.

Molds move between warehouses, shops, machines and repair; tool life lives in spreadsheets and depends on manual reports. One system closes both gaps: each mold reports its own location, and machine counts update its tool life.

Request a demo your molds, one site · 30 minutes How it works ↓

Row of presses at a Tier-1 supplier with Visual Factories monitoring

Self-poweredtracker · cellular · no wiring

Every shotcounted from the machine signal

1 subscriptionper mold — hardware included

“You can't manage a tool you can't find.”Molds are the most expensive tools in the plant — and the least visible.

The problem

Found by walking the floor. Counted by memory.

A mold fleet is spread across plants, suppliers and repair shops. Where it is, how many shots it has run and when it last saw maintenance are three questions with three different answers, none of them on a screen.

Molds found by walking the floor

Warehouse, shop, press, repair — outside the plant, at a supplier, scrapped. Somebody has to go and look.

Mount and dismount reported by hand

A form, a spreadsheet, a message — or nothing. The count is only as good as the last person who remembered.

Tool life reconstructed from spreadsheets

Maintenance comes too late for the molds that ran hard, too early for the ones that sat still. Part quality and press health pay for it.

One live picture of the entire tool fleet, on every site.

How it works

Locate. Identify. Count. Act.

Tool life without manual reporting: the mold tells the system which machine it is on.

01 · Locate

A self-powered tracker on each mold

Transmits its position over the cellular network — indoors and outdoors. No site infrastructure, no wiring.

02 · Identify

Location sets the status

In shop or warehouse, on the machine, in repair outside the plant, scrapped at end of life. Where resolution is not precise enough, manual mount reporting stays available as backup.

03 · Count

Every shot added to the mold

The Visual Factories IoT device reads the machine's signal counter. Each shot on that press is added to the mold that is mounted on it.

04 · Act

Maintenance on time

Tool-life alerts trigger maintenance when it is due. Reports show location, life and status for every tool.

Proven

The tool-life module runs today at aerospace customers.

Protecting part quality and machine health where the tolerances are tightest. The same module counts shots for your molds.

See the OEE Improvement application →

Managers reviewing Visual Factories data on a tablet

The kit — connect

One kit. Self-installed.

Everything ships in one kit with step-by-step instructions. Your team installs it without a technician visit:
wire the counter signal, join the plant Wi-Fi, mount the tracker. Done.

01 · Location tracker

Self-powered, sealed, magnetic

Mounts on the mold in seconds on a magnetic cradle base. Up to 10 years of battery at one location update per day; user-replaceable AA lithium cells, no charging.

02 · IoT device

Reads the machine counter

Streams shot counts to the Visual Factories cloud over the plant Wi-Fi. Power supply and relay are part of the device. 24 VDC, DIN-rail or wall mounting.

· connect the counter signal
· join the plant Wi-Fi
· mount the tracker

03 · Install guide

Three steps, remote support if needed

Simple instructions in the box. Pilot kits carry straight into the rollout, so nothing installed during the pilot is thrown away.

Location tracker

Positioning: GPS (GNSS), Wi-Fi scanning and cell-tower positioning, indoors and outdoors, resolved in the cloud to save battery
Connectivity: 4G/5G cellular, LTE-M / NB-IoT with global roaming. Embedded eSIM and data plan included
Battery: Up to 10 years at one update per day; user-replaceable AA lithium
Housing: IP68 sealed and rugged; magnetic activation, tamper detection. 154 × 66 × 21 mm
Hot molds: The magnetic cradle holds the device off the surface with an air gap; confirm the mounting spot keeps it within −30 to +60 °C

Visual Factories IoT device

Inputs: 8 digital inputs, 3 kHz counter input
Connectivity: 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) on the plant network, DHCP or static IP
Cloud link: MQTT to the Visual Factories cloud, TCP port 8883
Power: 24 VDC; power supply and relay included
Size / environment: 80 × 148 × 25 mm; −25 to +70 °C; DIN rail or wall

Commercial model — subscribe

One subscription per asset. No hardware to buy.

No one-time fee. One monthly subscription per monitored asset covers the hardware, the connectivity and the platform.

Tracked mold — per month

One flat monthly rate per tracked mold

Volume tiers reduce the rate as the fleet grows, and each tier applies to all assets going forward.

Location tracker with magnetic cradle base
eSIM cellular data, global roaming
Live location and the four statuses
Tool-life monitoring, alerts and reports
Support

Machine connection — per month

A reduced-rate connection for tool-life counting

One connected machine counts shots for every mold that mounts on it — machines are few, each serving the whole fleet. Upgrade any machine to add Visibility: performance alerts and OEE optimization on the same connection.

One machine, many molds
Start small: pilot on live molds at a single site
Pilot kits carry into the rollout
Volume-tiered term subscription · detailed quote on request

Operator at a Visual Factories station beside the press

What changes

Replace walking and spreadsheets with a live fleet picture.

Where every mold is, what it has run, and when it needs attention — on every site, on any device.

Today

Found by walking, counted by hand

Molds found by walking the floor. Mount and dismount reported by hand. Tool life reconstructed from spreadsheets and memory.

With Visual Factories

Located, counted, maintained on time

Each mold reports where it is. Machine counts feed its tool life. One live picture of the entire tool fleet, on every site.

Free download

Tools Tracking & Tool Life Monitoring — product overview

How it works, the kit, the hardware specifications and the subscription model — four pages for tooling, maintenance and plant managers.

PDF · 4 pages · your existing brochure

Start with a pilot on live molds at one site.

We ship the kit, your team installs it, and within weeks every mold on the site reports its location and its shots. Nothing from the pilot is thrown away at rollout.

Request a demo your molds, one site · 30 minutes Ask about a pilot

✓ Self-installed kit✓ No hardware to buy✓ Global cellular roaming✓ ISO 27001

← Back to all products