Timothy Spurrell was steered toward a career in the plastics industry by his father, who spent his entire professional life in the rubber and plastics sector. Having attended a technical vocational high school, Spurrell initially had no plans to pursue college.
"When I changed my mind and thought about studying engineering, my father, who worked in the plastics industry, thought it could be something of interest to me and that I could be a good fit," said Spurrell, who toured the University of Massachusetts Lowell and discussed polymer materials and the future of plastics. "It was during this tour that I had an eye-opening moment about plastics and decided to go into plastics engineering."
Spurrell was a co-op student working at Stihl Inc. in Virginia Beach, Va., where he gained experience in injection molding, process development and process troubleshooting. He also worked on a regrind project saving $350,000 annually as the program's ROI. Then, he was a plastics engineer at Granite State Plastics in New Hampshire, where he was exposed to "all types of products since they are a contract manufacturer, which I found interesting as it had exposed me to all different types of end markets, which I feel gave me better insight of best practices but also more of a well-rounded foundation."
Spurrell also worked as a plastics process manufacturing engineer at Nova Biomedical in Massachusetts. He is now an application development engineer for Nexeo Plastics.
One of his greatest achievements was during his time at Nova, when it was planning to move its injection molding division from Waltham to Billerica, Mass. Spurrell was heavily involved with the facility layout and managed aspects from utilities installation to machine installation and calibration.
"This was such a great experience for me younger in my career to be able to be involved in such a large capital project," he said. "Due to the smooth success of the department move and the organic growth of the injection molding department, I was able to quote out, purchase and manage the installation of an additional molding cell to the specifications that I wanted for our department and was the engineer leading the injection molding department."
At Nexeo, Spurrell works on material specifications at both the manufacturer level and at the original equipment manufacturer level. "On top of specification work, I also assist with both part design and tool design reviews, engineering simulations, material testing and analysis, and primarily the main technical point of contact for engineering programs," he said. "The challenges that I face are the primarily focused on changes in regulations and sustainability. While sustainability is definitely a hot topic, especially with more and more regulations around sustainability coming in the near future, [my] major challenge is shifting away from materials that contain PFAS."