Long-time American Mold Builders Assn. member Alan Petrucci wins award

Alan Petrucci was named the American Mold Builders Assn. Mold Builder of the Year at the group's just-concluded 2011 annual convention. The award was presented my Mike Armbrust, president of the AMBA. Petrucci has spent more than 53 years in the mold building industry beginning by working as a teenager for his father, Henry Petrucci, who owned Mirro-Brite, a mold polishing company. Alan began his apprenticeship as a moldmaker after graduation from high school at age 17.

He joined the AMBA in 1973. B A Die Mold (formerly of Rolling Meadows, IL, and now in Aurora, IL) would have been one of the ‘official’ charter companies of AMBA if Petrucci had not had to work that night to deliver a mold on time. He was instrumental in the founding of the organization along with Ole Bradley of PM Mold, and others. When Alan Petrucci started  B A Die Mold Inc. in 1968, he never dreamed that he would become one of the mold manufacturing industry’s most honored businessmen.

Petrucci has been active in the AMBA from the outset, volunteering his time to teach at College of DuPage via the AMBA’s early apprenticeship program and serving on apprenticeship committees. He also served on the Lyons Township High School Board for Vocational Training where he promoted moldmaking as a viable career path and spoke on career days to the students and advised the high school about how to structure its machinist and metalworking programs.

Petrucci has donated his time and resources wherever possible to ensure that all apprentices got a good start in the industry, and he has employed and educated numerous apprentices at B A Die Mold over the years—many of whom now own their own companies as a result. To this day he attends almost every Chicago Chapter meeting.

Petrucci has served the AMBA in many capacities over the years, and was a founding member of the Chicago AMBA’s Save American Manufacturing (SAM) USA organization, which went national and has never ceased in his endeavors to see U.S. manufacturing regain a strong foothold in the global marketplace.

On the shop side, B A Die Mold developed a system that offers precision positioning of virtually unlimited threads on any given part. The Programmable Electric Rotating Core (PERC) can be adapted to both traditional and hydraulic molding machines. PERC was officially patented in 2010 and customers who have utilized the system have only five-star reviews for it.

Other, earlier, firsts for B A include developing hot runner systems for molding starch. This was a proprietary medical application for a pharmaceutical customer that came about following the Tylenol scare back in the late ’80s. The starch capsules were tamper resistant and would shatter if anyone tried to do anything to them. B A didn’t invent the idea, but was the first to make it work.
B A is known for its expertise in troubleshooting and making molds work—including those it didn't build. B A also made hot edge gating work for a vendor that couldn’t; B A redesigned the system and the vendor is still using the process today. B A developed internal actions for a couple of customers where the motion of the mold controls the action within the mold to form features on parts that would otherwise be impossible to mold. B A’s design eliminated cylinders and external cams by activating the mechanism within the mold motion. This system is currently being used by customers in the appliance and industrial spray applications industries.

“Sitting there listening to Mike Armbrust read the bio of the Mold Builder of the Year award winner, I was trying to guess whether or not I knew the person since the years mentioned seemed to match my own,” said Petrucci afterwards. “When it dawned on me it was me he was introducing I was totally dumbstruck. My daughter, Cyndi, had to give me a shove to get me started up to the podium. I was so overwhelmed with emotion realizing that I had been selected out of all the countless other fine shop owners who deserved this, that I couldn’t find words to express my gratitude to the Board of Directors. I did manage to blurt out ‘I love the trade!’ All I could think of was that I’ve been selected to join a very special group of my peers. Thank you!”

Petrucci also received $5000 from Progressive Components, and is considering where to donate the money to benefit the industry. —Clare Goldsberry