Industry Watch 20139

Faig crosses over to The Tech Group

Approximately five weeks after his company posted a second-quarter loss of $3.3 million for its plastics technologies group, Harold Faig took early retirement and stepped down as the president and COO of Milacron Inc. (Batavia, OH). That retirement was short lived, however, as on Oct. 1 Faig assumed the role of president and CEO of The Tech Group—the Scottsdale, AZ-based custom molder and moldmaker where he has served on the board of directors since 1991.

Faig was continuously employed by Milacron for 36 years, including the final year as president and COO, but mounting losses and looming debt forced several restructurings of the company, including moves at the executive level that consolidated leadership under chairman and CEO Ron Brown. Shortly after Faig left, Milacron sold its Minnesota Twist Drill and Talbot Round Tools businesses in an effort to focus on its plastics technologies and generate liquidity to service its debt.

Faig now heads a company with nine facilities and 700,000 sq ft of production space in five countries. Steve Uhlman, founder and chairman of The Tech Group, says Faig’s work on Tech’s board gives him an “insider’s perspective” that will help the company optimize its capabilities.

Graduating engineers get foundation in plastics

This fall, shortly after classes had started, construction workers put the finishing touches on Western Michigan University’s (WMU, Kalamazoo, MI) brand-new 343,300-sq-ft College of Engineering & Applied Sciences. It didn’t take long for representatives from 50 companies to come by to recruit the next generation of engineers to lead their businesses into the future. The good news is that WMU’s students, wherever they go, will be well versed in plastics and plastics processing, thanks to a new 8000-sq-ft plastics lab.

The entire project, which includes an adjoining Business Technology & Research Park that currently houses 10 companies, was 10 years in the planning, two years in the building, and more than $99 million in price. But Paul Engelmann, a professor at the school and WMU’s chair of industrial manufacturing and engineering, says the cost was worth it.

“I’d put this campus up against any engineering applied sciences campus on the North American continent,” Engelmann says. The new plastics lab replaces what Engelmann calls a cramped 2500-sq-ft space with stacked gaylords and mobile auxiliaries and other equipment that had to be moved in and out of storage into the lab on the basis of need.

The new area has room for four extrusion lines, an 85-ton Van Dorn, a 30-ton Newbury, a 30-ton Engel, and an 18-ton Arburg, as well as a brand-new centralized material drying and handling system from Motan. Even with this equipment, the lab still has open slots for two 100-ton presses and one 250- to 400-ton machine, with an electric and a hybrid on the wish list.

The college doesn’t offer a polymer engineering degree, but it does have manufacturing engineering technology, engineering graphics and design technology, and engineering management technology degrees. While Engelmann says that the 12 to 15 courses in the department’s plastics curriculum could be cobbled together for a degree, WMU has a different plan for its students.

“The philosophy is that the majority of plastics firms out there need to hire manufacturing, industrial, and mechanical engineers,” Engelmann explains, “and those folks end up making a dramatic percentage of the decisions. So giving them enough background so that they’re more likely to ask good questions really helps the students coming out. If they’re working next to a graduate of Ferris State or UMass Lowell, now they can speak the same language.”

Husky displays its first injection molding machines (for metals)

Last month, Husky displayed its first molding machines—its first magnesium molding machines, that is. Two 500-metric-ton Model TXH500 Thixosystems equipped with Husky's Mg-molding hot sprues ran parts at an open house at Husky’s HQ in Bolton, ON sponsored by Husky and TXM licensor Thixomat (Ann Arbor, MI).

Following five years of development and a $10 million investment, Husky’s Mg-molding machine is now commercially available. The TXH500 is based on Husky’s field-proven Hylectric hybrid press platform. Prices start at about $1.5 million.