MMT Blog

I started my career in plastics on the west coast in the early 1970s, when the industry was primarily manufacturing-driven with few mold designers or plastics engineers. The workflow started at the top and trickled down to the design department or a contract designer who “cut his teeth” on the shop floor before moving to the drafting board.

The plastics industry needs to become an engineering-driven industry in which companies start a mold design apprentice on the shop floor just like a moldmaker apprentice. This training approach helps the designer learn the equipment and proper mold assembly, so he or she can see the various issues a mold builder confronts and then engineer a mold or tool to stop problems before they occur.

The next member of our new editorial advisory board is Charles (Charlie), Daniels. Charlie brings a unique finance background to the board in addition to sales, marketing and operations experience (and an active social media presence). He is currently the chief financial officer of Wepco Plastics in Middlefield, Connecticut.

Wepco Plastics is a family-owned company offering American-made parts through collaborative design, creative production quality, prototype tooling and rapid part production. The team specializes in rapid prototyping and short-run plastic injection molding with four-axis aerospace machining, fixturing and secondaries.

The temperature of hot runner systems is controlled by a series of heaters and thermocouples that are designed to work in conjunction with the temperature controller to keep the system at the desired temperature. In this video from last year’s Amerimold, Greg Osborn, chair elect for SPE—Mold Technologies Division, discusses how misdiagnosing temperature control issues caused by defective or incorrectly wired components can make finding root cause and solving the problem difficult and time consuming with Alliance Specialities’ Hot Runner Maintenance Superintendent Jerry Janczk.

“Take care of your people, then your people can take care of your customers – especially those customers serving the immediate needs on the frontlines,” Camille Sackett, Accede Mold & Tool’s Director, Business Development and Engineering Support says.

Leadership has been transparent, communicating the gravity and importance of the work the Accede team is doing on monitors across the facility. Customers are getting calls from the White House and they are counting on Accede to get the work done. With an employee-first philosophy, Accede tackles each project doing everything they can to get tooling done for customers, so they can get the essential medical and diagnostics supplies out to the frontline ASAP, like rapid test kits. “The speed at which things are happening and the uncertainty of what is to come is a challenge, but the team is adapting and rising to the occasion,” Sackett says.