Industry Watch 20044

Uncle SAM wants you

BILL AND LYNN Cermak’s dinner conversations last summer had increasingly revolved around one rather depressing topic.

“Every night I would come home and tell my wife, ‘My God, another customer of mine is going to China,’” Cermak says. A tooling and sales engineer at Pro Mold & Die (Roselle, IL), Cermak had tasted manufacturing’s flight first-hand every time he called a soon-to-be former client. After continually listening to her husband bemoan the worsening situation, Cermak’s wife had heard enough.

“For like the millionth time I was sitting there at the dinner table, and I was telling her [another customer had left],” Cermak says, “and finally she said, ‘Do something about it!’”

Cermak heeded his wife’s call to action, and he continues to do so. At first, he considered a march on Washington DC, but after being told such an action would create an initial splash but would not really reverberate, Cermak decided to take another route. Under guidance of the Chicago chapter of the American Mold Builders Assn. (AMBA), Cermak, along with that body’s board of directors, founded the Save American Manufacturing (SAM) movement and, as the group’s national chairman, immediately instituted a letter-writing campaign.

To date, the group has collected approximately 1500 letters, which it will present at the end of April to Illinois Congressman Don Manzullo, a Republican from Illinois’ 16th Congressional District, who has agreed to deliver the correspondence to Washington.

Cermak says Manzullo represents an exception to what he considers a government that is largely apathetic or in denial about American manufacturing’s fate.

“There is something terribly wrong with a $103 billion trade deficit with China,” Cermak says, “and we are going to ask our legislators to admit that fact.” Cermak says there are around 60 to 70 legislators in the Capitol who share that view, but for now, all SAM wants is the rest of the government to at least acknowledge the situation.

Cyndi Petrucci, a member of the Chicago AMBA chapter and SAM, shares Cermak’s view. “[The government] is ignoring the problem—they’re sidestepping it, they’re avoiding it,” Petrucci says. “No one’s coming right out and saying, ‘You know what? There’s a problem here—the manufacturing base is disappearing as fast as water through a sieve.’ Until they admit there’s a problem, nothing can be done.”

From the group’s website, www.samnow.org, SAM works to get the word out on the movement, which now has chapters in seven states, with eight more pending. Petrucci says visitors can register with the group at the site, as well as download sample letters to send to legislators and submit their own. Cermak says a new feature will display members of Congress that SAM has judged manufacturing friendly and alert visitors to legislation that could impact the situation.

Cermak knows money talks in the Beltway, and as a strictly volunteer organization, SAM can’t make a big splash financially, but he says the 15 to 20 night and weekend hours he devotes to SAM are better than sitting around and complaining to his wife.

“We started this out with the total understanding that we may not be able to do anything,” Cermak says, “but if we did nothing, we know what the result would be—nothing.”

Go big or go home

NOTICING a big trend in little parts, Mack Molding Co. decided to continue pursuing large-components business of local customers in the hopes of avoiding the desertion by smaller parts to low-cost-labor locales. The strategy has paid off for Mack as its revenues have grown enough to announce a reinvestment of that added capital in the form of new molding machines and an expansion.

As part of a strategic plan that goes through 2005, the company has already added two presses, 2500- and 3000-ton Engels, with plans for another 3500-ton machine within the year if business remains strong. The company also announced a 25,000-sq-ft expansion at its Inman, SC facility, which will house the company’s presses that range in size from 700 to 3000 tons, with the potential for a 4400-ton machine by 2005 if business abides. Mack will consolidate press capacity at its Statesville, NC plant between 150 and 700 tons.

Area clients like Freightliner, Yamaha, and Volvo’s truck unit made the expansion possible with successful bumper assembly programs for big rigs and a golf-cart canopy for Yamaha, among other jobs. Mack business director Jack Katilius says the company has noticed an appreciable up-tick in its customers’ business, which, according to market data, looks steady for the foreseeable future.

“We’re seeing the heavy trucks market pick up pretty steadily from now through the third quarter and maintaining there,” Katilius explains.

What Mack did see was a steady stream of smaller-parts jobs flowing out of the country over the course of the last few years. Throughout its 80 years in business, Mack had always gravitated towards bigger parts, but this trend in little components gave the company greater impetus to go big.

“We’ve seen a huge turn worldwide towards smaller presses being placed in places like China and Mexico,” Katilius reports, “and our basic approach here is to bring larger presses into a market area or geography where they’re needed. It just so happens that this Southeast quadrant has large-part requirements in automotive, heavy trucks, and all-terrain vehicles. [Large-part business] kind of defends us against the world competitive market of smaller presses.”

Katilius and Mack Southern Div. president Ray Burns both see big parts business staying strong because, if for no other reason, it has to stay localized due to the sheer logistics of shipping large components.

“If you’re going to mold large parts in China,” Burns says, “you’re inevitably going to consume those parts in China. It’s not logical that you would mold large parts in China and ship them over here for consumption. We felt [large parts] had some security [from leaving].”

Prized parts in structural applications

INNOVATION AND ingenuity on a larger scale were recognized at the 31st annual Society of the Plastics Industry’s Structural Plastics conference in Nashville, TN. Big winners included Bemis Mfg. Co., Horizon Plastics, Mack Molding, Envirotech, and GI Plastek, who were all awarded at least twice for applications ranging from bumper assemblies and combine components to personal watercraft parts and a cockpit canopy for a fighter jet.

Awarding parts and assemblies that take on some structural aspect in their end use, the part recognition segment of the conference displays innovative parts at the forefront of processing technologies. Out of 13 awards for different end markets as well as conference, judge’s, people’s choice, and Industrial Designers Society of America awards, 11 of the prizes went to straight injection, gas-assisted, or structural foam molded applications.

Mack was awarded three times, with one award each in the automotive, computer, and furniture categories for a bumper assembly, digital contract proof printer, and a stand-alone office system. The A3 Office System for Knoll consists of a canopy-enclosed desk top with an enclosed overhead storage unit. Gas-assisted molding produced high-finish and structurally sound parts; TPE overmolding added a tactile aspect.

Low-pressure structural foam and straight injection created the 20 highly stylized parts that comprised the digital proof printer for Creo, and the seven-part bumper assembly for Volvo achieved a Class A finish with fuel-saving weight reductions and more styling than its SMC predecessor.

Bemis was recognized last year for its John Deere tractor hood assembly; this year structural/aesthetic panels for a Buell motorcycle and parts for a Polaris watercraft were awarded. The watercraft used patent-pending foam core coinjection to reduce weight while increasing strength, and the motorcycle panels had molded-in color with high gloss and strong mar, UV, and impact resistance.

GI Plastek’s entry was visible from outside the conference’s hotel, where a massive Case combine greeted visitors. RIM was used for exterior panels with a total mass of 38,000 lb, and a new control console for the combine was molded.

Horizon was presented with the best material handling and single-part award for its Precision Wrapper portable stretch-film dispenser that used structural web and gas assist to create a lightweight part with a Class A finish.

In terms of “wow” factor, Envirotech garnered the most attention with an aircraft canopy designed for jet fighters in the U.S. Air Force (see “Molding Above and Beyond,” October 2002 IMM, for an initial report). Created with a proprietary bulk injection molding process, the canopy makers hope to replace a hand-formed laminate version at a tremendous savings to the government. While it isn’t in the field yet, the part was recognized as the best military or industrial part as well as the Conference Award winner. By this fall, Envirotech is slated to create a front canopy section for the T-38 training jet, applying the same process.

Syringe design injects ingenuity into product

MARIO VERDI DIDN'T have a cleanroom or an OEM for a new syringe design, but he did have a patent, FDA approval, and a market clamoring for the product. President of Creative Plastics & Design Inc. (Randolph, NJ), Verdi had been approached with an innovative design for a one-handed, single-use syringe that immediately traps the needle inside after use, helping to protect health care workers from needle pricks. Further developing the concept, CPD created a fiscally feasible manufacturing process based on the initial design. But even though Verdi says “you can eat off the floor” of his shop, the facility didn’t meet cleanroom specifications, so CPD had to outsource.

Verdi subcontracted out a redesigned syringe that called for six parts instead of the 11 with which he was initially presented. Fewer parts meant the new syringe could use fully automated assembly, which built in further cost savings. In their new form the 3- or 5-cu-cm syringes consist of a PP indexing ring, a plunger, a shield, a TPE grommet, an acetal locking ring, and a stainless steel or plastic spring.

Appreciating the product’s novelty, CPD conducted a patent search and application. “The [patent] search was lengthy and expensive,” Verdi says, “but at the end of the day, we were awarded a patent.”

After meeting FDA requirements, Verdi decided to market the syringe as a proprietary product of CPD.

Short shots

HELPING CUSTOMERS apply high-speed machining tenets, Mikron Bostomatic Corp. (Holliston, MA) has expanded showrooms in Massachusetts and Illinois to include HSM Competence Centers.

Charging 15 percent of the cost of a new cold half, Husky (Bolton, ON) announced a PET mold refurbishing and audit package.

A new Web-based process optimizer from Spirex (Youngstown, OH) offers customers help fine-tuning plasticating parameters.

Rapid prototyping and 3-D printing company Stratasys (Minneapolis, MN) announced its Dimension desktop segment will operate as a separate unit.