Blogs

A new exhibition at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY showcases a variety of products made from the seminal resin pioneered by Leo Baekeland. Working from a barn in Yonkers, the Belgian inventor perfected the formaldehyde compound in 1907, ushering in the age of plastics.

What did you think of U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union address? That was the question posed to Tessy Plastics CEO and president Roland Beck by his local newspaper in a short article here. Beck's opinion and that of other owners of small-to-medium-sized businesses often are monitored closely by politicians wise enough to recognize that SMEs are the lifeblood of an economy.

Sixteen years ago, (Feb. 14, 1994) I wrote an article for another plastics industry publication on the federal health-care reform issues Congress was trying then to pass. Those reforms were going to cost small manufacturers - molders and mold makers - millions. That pending legislation, which ultimately didn't pass, had molders wringing their hands in despair about the outcome of possible reform and what it would do to the medical industry and their own companies.

China wants the world to know that it’s working with, and not against it in its role as the world’s workshop. Check out the Chinese government's first-ever branding campaign, among other YouTube links to the 30-second commercial that’s run on CNN and other networks. I’m not sure I quite understand the logic behind the campaign, but it is certainly generating some boisterous online comment.

We've often written about rapid manufacturing as both a threat and an opportunity for the plastics processing industry. I'd argue that it is critical for injection molders who specialize in low-volume work to understand the process' capabilities; companies capable of offering rapid manufacturing via layered build-up processes such as selective laser sintering are very swiftly finding those molders' customers.

Further proof the world is getting smaller arrived in my email inbox today in the form of my 'plastics' alert from Google—an email I receive daily with a short list of stories about the industry that are circulating in the web-o-sphere. Typically, fishing reports ("The bass are biting on plastic worms at 20 feet off of the North Pier") figure prominently, but occasionally something else catches my attention.

This trail of comments on LinkedIn’s ‘plastic injection molding’ group page was started by a woman working at a Chinese moldmaker; she asked for feedback and got plenty. Most importantly for the plastics processing community, there are some good ‘best practices/lessons learned’ for any company considering sourcing molds from a new vendor, be it overseas or just a new domestic supplier.

As the Olympic torch makes its way across Canada en route to Vancouver and the 2010 Olympic Games, a portion of its journey through Ontario will be handled by Husky Injection Molding employee, Jason Ruby. According to The Caledon Enterprise, Ruby’s leg will take place on Dec. 28, with the 12-year Husky veteran selected to be a torchbearer in November after volunteering himself and his wife.

Officials at major multinational companies, the ones that have enough financial wherewithal to have someone really smart on staff whose job is to (figuratively) peer around the corner and try to anticipate what’s coming, know that ‘clean tech’---technology that helps clean air, water, helps plants run cleaner, and so forth—is a huge, huge market, and growing rapidly. Even those of us at smaller companies with not-so-deep pockets recognize this.