50 years ago, Jackson among those 'developing new materials, new processes'

As he strolled the show floor of K 2016 in Düsseldorf, Germany, last October, Bob Jackson was hard-pressed to find what had been an expo staple throughout his plastics career in mostly blow molding.

"I walked around. And then I looked around again," Jackson, 73, said. "There were no hydraulic machines. They were all all-electrics or hybrids."

The founder and president of Jackson Machinery Inc. in Port Washington, Wis., said he asked attendees who had also been to K 2013 what that show was like and was told about half the machines were hydraulic.

"That's a massive changeover in three years," Jackson said in a telephone interview. "We still have hydraulics and we will 10 years from now, but we will mostly be selling new electrics."

He knows the appeal. No hydraulic pressure settings and relief valves to adjust manually. That reduces operator error, downtime and maintenance while providing accurate, repeatable results.

"The machine is smarter. It can't do things that the hydraulic machine can inadvertently do to break itself," Jackson said. "As a result, people will, as they are in Europe, buy all-electric."

He figures less than 1 percent of the blow molders operating in the United States are electric compared to 20 to 25 percent in Europe with both markets lagging greatly behind the injection molding sector, which began its transition much earlier.

After graduate school at Wayne State University, Jackson got his first job in the industry at the former Peninsular Machinery Co., in Detroit. It was 1968, just a year after actor Dustin Hoffman's character Benjamin Braddock was given that one word of famous career advice: plastics.

"Plastics is the game," Jackson said, referring to the movie "The Graduate." "Today plastics is still growing but not as rapidly."

Still, he shares similar advice to young adults considering jobs in all plastics sectors.

"It's healthy across the board," Jackson said. "We've an expanding world population and the only way to feed and clothe everyone is with synthetic materials, whether it is rayon, nylon or plastic water bottles. Plastics are an integral part of feeding and caring for humans. Our forefathers managed just fine, but in today's society you can't live without it in the lifestyle we've managed to get ourselves to, so it is an absolute necessary ingredient."

When he was starting out, Peninsular Machinery was one of the oldest machine tool houses in the country. As a new hire, Jackson was faced with a choice that he looked at in terms of two briefcases.

"One case was filled with 200 years of machine tools that you had to learn. The other case had the recently invented reciprocating screw, so plastics," he said, referring to the 1956 patented advance that made frictional heating and mixing possible.

Reciprocating screws delivered a homogeneous melt, uniform viscosity, and faster production rates, material changes and color changes. Jackson was eager to find out more.

"There was only a few years of knowledge to acquire and you could learn it quickly and there was an excitement at the time with injection molding going nuts in automotive," he said. "We were developing new materials, new processes, you name it."

Tough lessons were learned along the way. Jackson recalled trying to help blow mold the first "low-pack material" for beverages with Monsanto Co., which had a plastic container unit until 1987. The material was later declared a carcinogen, he said.

"PET followed and it's doing very well," Jackson added. "These are all the pioneering things that happened while I was watching and I was involved with most of them. It was really fun."

It still is for him with automation offering new opportunities. Jackson was part of a team building a machine for Nike sports bottles that will squirt a bit of refreshing water on the faces of people working out. The bottle has two inserts of EPDM, an elastomeric rubber, that is injection molded and then sent into the blow molding mold where little vacuum holes hold them in place. The bottle is blown and trimmed, and those inserts become grippers.

"Then, you don't lose the bottle as you're pedaling down the road," Jackson said.

The team got down to 37 seconds to produce a bottle, he added, until someone suggested creating a work cell with a robot between the two machines. That ran at 24 seconds.

"That got rid of the human and the possibility of the human making a mistake," Jackson said. "It was all done precisely and faster by robot."

Although jobs held by people could fall by the wayside, Jackson said they don't pay a high wage, usually $9.50 to $11 an hour, so businesses can recover their equipment investment quickly.

"I'd like to see lights-out plants. I really would and we're pushing towards that," Jackson said. "Every time I can automate something I do and every time I can suggest it for clients, I do. It makes the whole thing go so much better."

As he approaches his 50th year in the industry, Jackson said he is most proud of receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers at the 2016 blow molding conference.

"The other folks recognized with this award are the pioneers of our industry, and it's a great compliment," he said. "You've got Don Graham, the founder of Graham packaging who now owns Graham Engineering and other firms; Robert Slawska, who just passed away and had founded Sterling Blow Molding Machines; Bob DeLong, who was 20 years at Solvay as their head techie and probably the best blow molder in the country; and Don Peters, the best technical person for Chevron Phillips. To be classed with them, you just say, 'Wow. Thank you.'"