Hall of Fame: Beaumont pushed education, innovation

ERIE, PA. — John Beaumont understands the importance of education — 10 of the 22 employees at Beaumont Technologies Inc. are graduates of Penn State Erie.

That makes sense, since Penn State Erie plastics engineers are scattered throughout the industry, like salt from a snowplow on Erie's winter streets. Beaumont himself was one of the three founding faculty members of the Plastics Engineering Technology Program. He was the program chair from 1999 to 2012, and taught there for 25 years.

Now Beaumont, 62, is joining the Plastics Hall of Fame. Perhaps fittingly, the Plastics Hall of Fame is housed at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he graduated in 1976 with a degree in plastics technology.

He went on to work on early simulation software for injection molding at Moldflow Inc., moved to academia in Erie, then discovered — first, the problem of shear-induced melt variations in a runner, causing an imbalance in multi-cavity molds — and then the solution, called MeltFlipper.

But he didn't start out in plastics. And he took a side trip as a chimney sweep.

Path to plastics

Raised in a military family, Beaumont moved around a lot. He graduated from high school after his father retired to Holden, Mass.

Beaumont went to Bridgewater State University to study botany.

Botany?

“It was the ‘60s, early ‘70s, and I wanted to invent the plant of the future to save the world,” he said. “And I got into botany, and I said … nahhh.”

Vegetation engineering's loss was plastics engineering's gain.

After he figured out he really didn't like botany, Beaumont did what all scholars do. He went to library.

“I was looking at an alternative to where I was at, digging around to see what's out there. And really at that time I was starting to think about getting married. I was dating my high school sweetheart, Betty, who was the girl I married, and I started to think: ‘Well, I need to be serious about a job,'” he said.

“I had never thought of engineering,” he said. “As soon as I saw the field of engineering in plastics, it was, wow that sounds neat.”

Beaumont gets excited about things. When he talks, at times he sounds like a mix between Jimmy Olsen and Bill Gates. His students appreciate the enthusiasm.

“In my opinion, his knowledge, passion and devotion to plastics is unparalleled. He was not my adviser at [Penn State] Behrend, but he helped me on my senior project like he was. He always seemed to make time for his students,” wrote Michael Page, who works at Terumo Medical Corp. in Elkton, Md., in a letter of support for the Plastics Hall of Fame.

Shawn Gross, engineering and materials manager at Viking Plastics in Corry, Pa., graduated from the Erie college in 1999.

“His strong relationships, his attitude, his innovative approaches, and his friendly personality make him a good example for all of us,” Gross wrote.

After Beaumont graduated from Lowell, he became a research engineer at General Tire & Rubber Co.'s vinyl products division in Reading, Mass. It was a union shop, chaotic. He did not think it was neat. So he left after a six months.

Beaumont moved on to Rowland Technologies Inc., a custom extrusion house in Connecticut, as project engineer. He and Betty started a side job as chimney sweeps. They bought their first house and wanted some additional heating. So he met a guy who sold and installed coal stoves. Beaumont took a leap of faith and bought the business, making payments. He left Rowland.

“So for two years we did that pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said. “I was just working my ass off. I hired a couple of employees. But then the business failed after a couple of years.”

It was devastating. But Beaumont learned he had a strong work ethic. He also knew how to properly start a business, by lining up an accountant, lawyer and other support help — which he did when he started the company turning out MeltFlippers.

From an art to a science

He jumped back into plastics in the mid-80s, getting a job as engineering manager at American Optical Corp.'s safety products molding plant in Southbridge, Mass. He oversaw 25 injection molding machines, but quickly saw that the company needed new molding technology to turn out its hard hats and safety goggles.

On his own, Beaumont researched all the major brands of injection presses. His office was peppered with charts. He developed an investment plan, cost-justifying the investments and figuring out financial details. He took it to his boss, who took it to management. Nothing happened.

Discouraged, Beaumont left American Optical, but right away, another division of the company, the contact lens division in Framingham, Mass., called to offer him a job. This was a high-tech plant that ran newer presses, Arburgs. He began developing plans for a lights-out molding operation. Then Ciba Vision Corp. bought the company. Ciba was consolidating, moving the plant to Atlanta.

They wanted Beaumont to remain as director of engineering. He balked. And in 1986, he joined Moldflow Pty. Ltd., founded just 8 years earlier by Colin Austin in Australia. Moldflow pioneered computer simulation of injection molding — how plastic fills a mold. That was a major advance in advancing molding from an art to a science. For Beaumont, it was a revelation that got him thinking deeply about rheology.

“It was that early-thinking stage, that shark-tank sort of environment. A lot of things were being kicked around,” he said.

It was 15 years before 3-D simulation began to appear, the earliest versions of the simulation software common today. There were no graphics in the mid-80s. Instead of 3-D images on a computer screen, the system gave you a series of numerical outputs. Austin's system used metrics, pressures were measured in megapascals. As technical manager, responsible for training people to use it, Beaumont complained that Moldflow needed to get user-friendly for Americans.

“Colin's attitude was, these programs are for engineers. They can figure it out,” Beaumont recalled, with a hearty laugh.

Beaumont understands that modern 3-D graphics and ease of use have helped simulation penetrate the broad plastics industry. But he thinks they've taken the “brains” out of it. Complex mathematics is behind simulation.

He's glad he was at Moldflow in the 80s.

“It was important for starting a new thought process. And really, dissecting how things mold, and breaking things down. On molding. On shrinkage and warpage and stresses and all that stuff,” Beaumont said. “And even today, the technology is very prevalent, it's everywhere. But people don't think anymore. It's just pictures now. Back then … you had to be more creative in your thought and how to use that information.”

Penn State Erie program

Beaumont was happy at Moldflow. He was making technical presentations across the country. Working on cutting-edge stuff. Then at a Society of Plastics Engineers' Antec conference, Penn State Erie officials recruited him to help start the new plastics program. He brushed it aside. He called Betty, and she said it sounded interesting.

“Once I started thinking about it, I was like, ‘Wow, how could you make a bigger impact on the industry than as an educator in a plastics program? And bring in new ideas and new technologies.' You feel a little bit like Johnny Appleseed, planting the seeds,” he said.

One of the first things he did in Erie was to create, and direct, the Plastics CAE Center, working with software providers.

Beaumont, who joined Penn State Erie in 1989, was impressed with the local plastics industry involvement to get the program running. Men like Joe Prischak of Plastek Industries Inc., Bill Witkowski of Port Erie Plastics Inc., Hoop Roche of Erie Plastics Co. and George Loranger of Loranger Manufacturing Corp. pushed for the plastics school and contributed time, money and equipment. The big Plastics Technology Center opened in 1994.

When the first program chair, Bob Farrel, retired, Beaumont became chair, a position he held from 1999 to 2012. He retired from teaching in June of 2014, but returns as emeritus professor to teach and help out.

“I'm still working seven days a week” at Beaumont Technologies, he noted.

John Ralston, operations manager at the company, nominated him for the Plastics Hall of Fame.

Developing the MeltFlipper

While teaching at Penn State, Beaumont decided to go for a master's degree in plastics engineering at his alma mater, UMass-Lowell. He earned it in 1994. His routine was “absolutely nuts,” he said. He taught in Erie Monday until early afternoon, then drove to Buffalo to fly to Boston, followed by classes in Lowell Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, then back to Erie to teach Thursday and Friday.

Beaumont studied teaching styles of the veteran teachers at UMass-Lowell as much as polymer matrixes.

“It was kind-of neat to be able to go back at that point in my life, and here I am — teaching — to see how other people teach,” he said. “I didn't have any training, I came out of industry.”

His work at the Plastics CAE center led to the development of MeltFlipper. Beaumont was helping a company that made components for air bag covers. The perfect, “naturally balanced” runner system for eight-cavity mold was … unbalanced. It would not fill uniformly. As part of the computer-aided engineering process, the students and faculty sized the runners, and initially, Beaumont advised that the most likely problem was differences in cooling, causing the center mold cavities to run hotter than the outside ones — a common explanation at the time. But after tests, using two temperature controllers to adjust for that, the mold still was unbalanced

“This was the first time I was forced to sit down and say: Things don't happen by magic. There's something going on,” he said. “Then finally it just dawned on me.”

Beaumont started talking about it in his classes. He won a best paper award at the 1997 Antec, where he raised the question: Is the runner causing the imbalance? Every multi-cavity runner system has bends, as the main runner branches off to eventually reach the mold. The problem is that the molten plastic inside the runners has variations in temperature, and therefore, viscosity. The outside part gets warmer from friction rubbing against the runner walls, and has higher shear.

So when the melt bends and branches off, the cooler material in the center all of a sudden swings out onto an outside wall. That makes the runner system unbalanced as it goes to the mold.

The MeltFlipper process is to machine in a little knuckle at every branch point, so the melt comes up and goes down. The melt gets “rotated.”

Beaumont Technologies has sold thousands of MeltFlippers around the world. Customers send their mold drawings to engineers at the Erie company, who develop a customized MeltFlipper design. The customer then machines it into their mold. For an existing mold, they can machine an insert and weld it into the runner, or re-cut the runner.

“The simplicity is probably the best thing about this. There are no bells and whistles and wires and LEDs,” he said.

Today, MeltFlipper is recognized as an innovation. But it took time to convince the skeptics. Because Beaumont was a professor, Penn State Erie owned the patent. Normally, the university likes to license the technology to an outside business.

“But in this case, I had developed a solution to a problem that the industry didn't understand. So there was nobody that was going to license this. So I finally said the only way this is going to happen is if I do it. Otherwise it's going to sit on some academic shelf for decades to come,” he said.

So he purchased his patent from the university and started his company in 1998.

In his letter supporting Beaumont for the Plastics Fame, injection molding guru John Bozzelli calls MeltFlipper “one of the major advances in mold-filling analysis, tool design and processing in the history of plastics.”

New program

Now Beaumont Technologies is expanding into resin characterization, developing something called a Therma-flo Moldometer, a special mold cartridge cut with channels with flow geometries of various sizes. The process is designed to be a first-pass method to characterize how a polymer will actually mold.

Beaumont Technologies already teaches workshops on Moldflow, product development and other topics. But at NPE 2015, the company is announcing a much broader effort, the American Injection Molding Institute. In the one-year program, students alternate between coming to the Erie company for one week, then go back to work and do online courses reviewing the material.

AIM courses will include materials, mold design and rheology, processing and product design. After they take each course, they have to pass an exam to move onto the second class.

Initially, AIM will be for engineers. But Beaumont plans to broaden the focus.

Beaumont understands the plastics industry's need for skilled people who really understand molding. A four-year degree isn't always necessary.

“We really want to teach the technician — that sharp person that a company has,” he said.

Once a teacher, always a teacher.

Check out a video profile of Beaumont.