AIM Plastics Inc. moved equipment Feb. 19-21 into a new, $4.5 million, 35,000-square-foot manufacturing center at its Clinton Township, Mich., headquarters. The center includes a 6,000-square-foot clean room.
Medical work accounts for about 90 percent of business volume.
“We broke ground in October 2007, and construction began in 2008,” said Jim Jarrett, president.
The firm occupies 55,000 square feet now and is converting its adjacent 20,000 square feet into a technology center for in-house tooling and sampling.
As now configured, there are 20 presses in the manufacturing center, six in the clean room and five in the technology center.
New equipment includes a $200,000 Wittmann material-drying system, an ITW Trans Tech pad printer and three Arburgs: the firm's second two-shot 110-ton hydraulic, a 450-ton hydraulic and a 150-ton vertical with a rotational platen.
“The new equipment is in place, calibrated and ready to go,” Jarrett said.
Acorn Industries Inc. of Livonia, Mich., is certifying the $250,000 clean room to Class 100,000 and Class 10,000 standards. For now, it will operate at Class 100,000.
In mid-2009, AIM acquired two Mitsubishi computer numerically controlled electric discharge machines, one sinker and one wire.
The firm employs 52 and had 2009 sales of about $9 million although it lost an $875,000 medical account. Clinton Township is part of metropolitan Detroit.
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