Plastics plants boon for controller maker
LEESBURG,VA. — Plastics machinery continues to be the top business for Eurotherm Inc., which makes Maco controllers and other systems for heat and process control.
``Plastics is our biggest segment,'' said Steve Blomquist, the new president of Eurotherm USA, responsible for business development in North, South and central America. ``We do have very strong growth projections in plastics.''
Much of the growth will come from new products, such as the Maco compact machine controller. ``Another strong point is the need for retrofitting among what really is a huge installed base of Maco products,'' Blomquist said in a May 22 telephone interview from Eurotherm headquarters in Leesburg.
According to Steve Schroeder, global business development manager for plastics, there are about 1,500 Maco controllers running at U.S. plastics plants. Eurotherm soon will roll out a retrofit product specifically aimed at the popular Maco 8000.
Eurotherm leaders want the company to have broad capabilities, to sell either a one-off component or a package. Customers also can have Eurotherm technicians handle the complete design and installation. The company also sells through independent systems integrators.
``They can buy bits and pieces to incorporate into their own control needs, or they can buy a complete control system from us, packaged in a box, to meet their needs,'' Blomquist said.
Blomquist came to Eurotherm in March from TM GE Automation Systems LLC, a maker of industrial drives for heavy industry, where he was strategic process and marketing director. His other experience includes stints as engineering vice president at printing press maker Dauphin Graphic Machines Inc. and a director and general manager with Schneider Electric SA.
Although plastics is its largest market, Eurotherm is a broad-line supplier of control, measurement and data recording equipment to several other industries, including pharmaceuticals, heat-treating, plate glass and the waste-water sector.
Blomquist said the heat-treating business also is strong in North America, especially to serve specialty equipment for the aerospace business.
Industry vet Rubin garners PPA award
MCHENRY, ILL. — The Plastics Pioneers Association Inc. has named Irvin Rubin the winner of its Much Traveled Shirt Award, for service to PPA and the plastics industry.
Rubin picked up his honor at PPA's February meeting in Florida.
Rubin wrote the classic book Injection Molding, Theory and Practice, in 1972. Rubin's plastics career began in 1940, when he became technical director at Robinson Plastics Corp. in Hoboken, N.J. He has lectured throughout the world in injection molding and extrusion.
PPA, based in McHenry, has given out the ``shirt'' every year since 1954.
Entek donates funds to college program
LEBANON, ORE. — Entek Manufacturing Inc., an extruder maker in Lebanon, has donated $100,000 to Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Ore.
The money will support the college's technical training and machine shop programs.
``We plan to grow significantly over the next five years and we will need well-trained machinists to support this growth,'' Entek President Larry Keith said. ``Our ability to attract and hire technically trained people is essential to realizing our vision.''
Brandstätter buys Ferromatik presses
MALTERDINGEN, GERMANY — The German maker of Playmobil toys, Geobra Brandstätter GmbH & Co. KG, bought four large Maxima injection presses from Ferromatik Milacron Maschinenbau GmbH of Malterdingen.
The presses, each with a clamping force of 1,300 metric tons, will not be molding toys. Instead, Geobra Brandstätter will mold self-watering plants for the Lechuza brand, at its main factory in Dietenhofen, Germany.
The customer likes Ferromatik Milacron's patented monosandwich process, because of its good distribution of skin and core components, needed for the large planters, according to a news release from Ferromatik.
``Our aim is to offer these planters, unpainted, at an attractive price in order to reach a wider range of customers,'' said Robert Benker, technical director at Geobra Brandstätter, in the release.
Ferromatik Milacron is a unit of Milacron Inc. of Cincinnati.
In other news, Ferromatik Milacron displayed a special model of its all-electric press, called the Elektra selection 110, at the KMO 2008 trade show, held in April at Bad Salzuflen, Germany.
The show machine had a clamping force of 110 metric tons. It molded series terminals for the electrical industry.
The ``selection'' designation means the press comes only with specific, practical options, Ferromatik Milacron said.
That means the company can produce a lower-priced machine, without additional engineering and assembly requirements. ``This allows the special model to be supplied faster and offered at a better price,'' said Guy Moilliet, managing director.
The options include increased injection speed, a wear-resistant plasticizing unit, integrated hydraulics package for core-pulls, up to 16 hot-runner controls and Mosaic software for process monitoring and quality control.
Davis-Standard gets patent on adapter
PAWCATUCK, CONN. — Davis-Standard LLC engineers Frederick Suppon and John Montalbano received a patent on a combining adapter to make microlayers in multilayer extrusion coatings and films.
The adapter also is referred to as a ``flow velocity profiler.'' It features a cartridge assembly body, or cassette, with individual cavities with precision layer inserts and divider walls to create passageways.
The layering inserts form flow channels that can be individually selected or changed to accommodate feed-path flows.
Also, each insert can divide one polymer inlet feed into two channels. That means, for example, that a cartridge designed with nine inserts can create or define 18 individual channels.
The design allows a larger number of layers within a smaller package, and customize it based on polymer rheology.
Davis-Standard is based in Pawcatuck.
RusVinyl Ltd. in talks for an industrial park
DZERZHINSK, RUSSIA — A joint venture between two plastic resin producers is talking with regional authorities about creating a major industrial park for processing PVC into products such as pipe and window profiles in Dzerzhinsk.
RusVinyl Ltd., a venture of Brussels, Belgium-based SolVin GmbH and Moscow-based petrochemicals firm Sibur LLC, also recently received a green light from the European Union's competition authorities on its PVC resin manufacturing plans.
RusVinyl, which plans a 650 million euro ($1 billion) capital investment in Russia, aims to establish Russia's first world-scale integrated vinyl resin plant, with a capacity of 727.5 million pounds per year at Kstovo, Russia. The complex, due for launch in 2010, also will have caustic soda capacity of 496 million pounds per year.
Briefly …
Cleveland-based Preformed Line Products Co., a supplier to the power and telecommunications markets, needed quick delivery of an extruder to its factory in Albermarle, N.C., to meet a large customer order for air-flow spoiler products for the electrical industry. Davis-Standard LLC quickly delivered an HPE-150 A extruder, a plug-and-play machine with a screw diameter of 1½ inches. The extruder is mounted on an axis, so PLP can use it for primary or coextrusion applications.