Kickstart: Spin to win

In today's episode of "I wonder who makes that," we're going to spin the prize wheel to find out ... just who makes that wheel you're spinning.

ThermoPro Inc. is an industrial thermoformer in Duluth, Ga., that makes a range of products for exercise equipment, medical devices and retail kiosks in addition to custom prize wheels (both free-standing ones and others sized for tabletop displays).

"Our custom prize wheels are a big draw at trade shows, company events and parties, school fairs, fundraisers and often used for employee motivation and appreciation," the company says on its website prizewheelsrfun.com. "Spin the wheel and win a prize!"

ThermoPro also makes "prize drop" games, better known as Plinko boards.

The company is in the midst of planning an expansion, PN correspondent Jeannie Reall writes. The company hasn't said if it'll have a prize wheel at a future grand opening, but I suspect that will happen.

Also winning this year are the makers of plastic municipal water pipes, as the city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, reports that number of water main breaks in its system have decreased dramatically since Moose Jaw began replacing cast iron pipes with PVC pipes.

There were 54 breaks in 2021, which is similar to the number of breaks in 2020. But that compares to 109 breaks in 2019, 97 in 2018 and 116 in 2017, according to the local paper, Moose Jaw Today.

"2021 and 2020 have been good years for the city, especially in respect to the last four or five," Darrin Stephanson, director of public works and utilities, told the paper. "So, that's obviously favorable for us and just tells us that the cast iron water main replacement program is working well."

So far the city has replaced 20 kilometers out of 84 kilometers of cast iron pipe.

October may seem like its a long way off from February, but organizers of K 2022 in Germany are already laying the groundwork to establish themes for the triennial show.

Germany's VDMA trade group is posting a series of Q&As with industry leaders under the title Way2K in advance of the show Oct. 19-26 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Our sister paper Sustainable Plastics has posted one from Gerd Liebig, CEO at Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Plastics Machinery GmbH.

In it, Liebig discusses the circular economy, options for reducing the amount of plastics through thinner-wall products and the need to make more sustainable plastics equipment.

"All-electric injection molding machines require less energy, less water, less oil lubrication, less utilization of materials, which basically means much fewer resources," Liebig said. "Let's take a 350-ton all-electric machine as an example: Compared with a hydraulic machine in the same clamp force class, an all-electric machine produces 40 to 80 percent less CO2 per year."