Itasca, Ill. – Mehdi Keshtkar was not always a believer. He is now.
Working in the oil and gas industry a few years ago, he said he didn't have much respect for the ubiquitous plastic cap.
“This is not something that I should care about. This is not complex,” he said he remembers thinking. “This is not engineering.”
Now, as product development manager for Nova Chemicals Corp.'s research and development organization, Keshtkar is not afraid to say he has seen just what goes into making an effective plastic cap.
And it's a lot, he said at the recent Plastics Caps & Closures 2015 conference in Itasca.
“This is so complex. This is engineering,” he said. “In order to make that perfect cap, a high degree of collaboration is required.”
But just who exactly needs to collaborate?
You got your molders. You got your equipment suppliers. You got your resin suppliers. And your cap designers. And don't forget mold designers.
“In order to make that perfect cap, a high degree of collaboration is required,” he said. “It's all about collaboration.
“A few years ago, I'm thinking this is not complex. Today, I'm thinking this is so complex,” Keshtkar said. “A perfect cap just doesn't happen.”
All caps are not created equal. But all caps perform the same basic function. Protecting the contents of their particular containers.
And based on just what is in those containers, the physical properties of different caps can be tweaked to control attributes such as density, barrier properties, heat deflection and softness, for example.
“Collaboration is the key to any successful cap project,” he told the crowd at the conference organized by Plastics News.