Exhibitors like Bolton, Ontario-based machinery maker Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., which occupied a 12,000-square-foot space just east of Hall A's main entrance, experienced marginal impacts.
"The lights were dimmed for a brief period of time, but it didn't directly impact our displays or the conversations we had with customers," spokeswoman Allison Karavos said in an email.
Chinese injection molding machinery maker Haitian Plastics Machinery Ltd., sharing booth space with German subsidiary Zhafir Plastics Machinery GmbH, also experienced a brief loss of 120-volt power on Wednesday and Thursday at its 4,800-square-foot exhibit.
"The machines were unaffected. Everything ran nonstop," Patrice Aylward, communications consultant for Absolute Haitian Corp., the exclusive sales and service partner for Haitian, said during a phone interview. "What we lost were lights."
"It was just a small bump in the road, really, because we understand that the power draw for this show is unusually high. … If the machines had gone down, it would've been quite a different story," she added.
Coperion K-Tron's booth displays were left without power for hours in Hall A, according to John Winski, the company's director of sales.
"On Wednesday, we were down for about two hours, and on Thursday it was three-plus hours," Winski said in an email. "We lost accent lighting for our sign above the booth, and the lighting in the hall was reduced by 50 percent."
The Sewell, N.J.-based company, part of Coperion's equipment and systems division, also lost power at its 2,500-square-foot booth to its main high-definition television, virtual reality display, dense phase conveying display and its feeder/dilute phase display.
Winski said Coperion had power for low-voltage items, such as computers, lead machines and some other lighting, but anything running on three-phase power "was the problem."
Shari Lake, Coperion K-Tron's director of marketing, said she immediately went to show services during the May 9 power outage to report the incident.
"When I arrived at the OCCC counter, about four other companies were arriving at the same time and other companies had already called in their outages," Lake said in an email. "The people at the counter seemed helpful and assured us help would arrive soon. It was not so soon, as John mentioned ... but they did arrive later to get power back on."
As for an explanation, Lake said she had been told by OCCC staff that a couple of power grids had gone out. But on May 10, the second power outage, Coperion faced additional lighting problems at its booth.
"On Thursday, our big LED was affected as well as the overhead lights, which were part of our booth setup," Bettina Koenig, director of global marketing communications at German parent company Coperion GmbH, said in an email.
"We were able to start up the wall after it went dark on Thursday when the power came back. We were not able to light up the booth again on Thursday and had to work without the additional lights," she added.
The company eventually ended up calling in Production Resource Group LLC, which handled lighting setup for the Coperion booth, to troubleshoot the issues, Koenig said.
"They had to go up with a boom lift the next morning, only to find out that some breakers under the roof had to be [reset], which was under the responsibility of the convention center organization," she explained.
All lights at the booth were back on Friday morning by 7:15 a.m., she said.
"I'm not sure which halls were impacted, but it was a major disappointment considering the amount of money we pay for electrical service in the booth and the investment we make to have running displays to educate our customers on our products," Winski said.
According to rates on the NPE website, the Plastics Industry Association offered full/associate member discounts for exhibit space: $25.50 per square foot for up to 400 square feet of space and $22.25 for anything over 4,000 square feet, for example.
Service providers for the association received a discount rate of $33 per square foot. Nonmember space rates were $42 per square foot.
All exhibitors were charged $1.20 per square foot for 120-volt service, according to the website.
Bill Duff, general manager of sales and marketing at machinery maker Yizumi-HPM Corp., said the power outage on Wednesday afternoon of the show caused the company's 1,200-ton injection molding machine to blow a fuse.
"We grabbed our testing equipment … opened the cabinets and checked everything. We couldn't detect what the issue was, only that one of the safeties in the machine had tripped and it protected our machine, but something occurred to the incoming power — that's for certain," Duff said in a phone interview.
Two other machines that were running at the company's 3,200-square-foot space continued to operate normally. Duff said that despite asking convention center staff about the cause of the power issues, no explanation has been reported.
"It's concerning because it did damage the machine," Duff added. "We had to replace a breaker in the machine that it pretty much fried. Luckily, we had one with us."
