Featured Articles

Maxim Surgical (Richardson, TX), a recently established and privately owned designer and manufacturer of spinal implants, has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for a cervical interbody fusion system made of machined polyetheretherketone (PEEK) rods.

The fusion system is hollow so that bone can grow through the device, fusing the adjacent bony surfaces of the vertebrae. The cervical spacer for the spinal fusion market is Maxim's first orthopedic implant.

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Tokyo) has acquired the PVC compounding business of Comtrex, LLC (Warren, MI). This is the second such move made by the company following its offer to purchase the compounding business of the Tessenderlo Group (Brussels, Belgium).

Goya Foods Inc., the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the U.S., launched a redesign of its marinade product line, converting 12-oz (355-ml) and 24.5-oz (725-ml) products from glass to PET bottles from Amcor Rigid Plastics.

In a sign of the times, two different papers at ANTEC last month explored the potential of improving manufacturing processes for plastic scaffolds used in tissue engineering—the synthetic production of new human organs.

One paper looked at use of injection molding microcellular foam, or MuCell, and the other looked at thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) because of its value in producing highly porous scaffolds with interconnected structures.

The XL1 Super Efficient Vehicle from Volkswagen has gone into limited production at the automaker's Osnabrück plant in Germany with carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) and aluminum dominating as materials of construction. The vehicles boasts fuel consumption of just 0.9 l/100 km (approx. 261 mpg US).

Approximately 1100 visitors turned out in Kottingbrunn, Lower Austria to attend Wittmann Battenfeld's 2013 Competence Days (April 24-25), taking in 17 injection molding machines in operation as well as 30 exhibits from the company's automation and auxiliary units, all housed with in a brand new assembly hall for large machines that officially opened as well.

A study done at Value Plastics, a molder of precision molded couplers for medical applications, shows that a servo welder produces hermetic welds with a standard deviation of 0.4% compared to 2.9% when using a pneumatic welder.

Those results were reported last month at ANTEC in Cincinnati, OH by three officials at Dukane Corp., which has been testing potential benefits of its recently developed servo-driven ultrasonic welder.

Long-delayed equipment investments, a resurgent automotive market, and one of the world's largest plastics shows came together last spring to help push a number of equipment suppliers in North America to record performances in 2012, including automation and injection molding machine supplier Engel.

"[NPE2012] certainly didn't hurt; we really couldn't have timed it any better," Engel North America President Mark Sankovitch told PlasticsToday. "The show was just one part of multiple pieces-everything aligned."

Being tagged ‘Made in the USA’ has come to mean a lot to consumers as emphasis on U.S. manufacturing and its many benefits to supporting a strong American economy has come to the forefront of media attention. It also means something to moldmakers as well.
   

Scott Edwards, managing director at Sun Capital Partners, said that the timing was right to form the sixth-largest plastic packaging company in the world.

"We felt there was tremendous opportunity to bring together the organizations and better serve a global customer base," he told PlasticsToday. "These businesses fit together, serving either flexible or rigid packaging, and many serve the same customers."