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This blog has been the bearer of some bad news for the plastics industry lately, as we have discussed things like salary inflation, the low labor participation rate, and the great resignation. But there is also some good news emerging from the post-pandemic recovery: Generation Z has a more positive view of the manufacturing sector than it did two years ago. An enterprise, cloud-based software company, Parsable, recently conducted a…

Hallowe’en is still two weeks away, yet the stores are full of pumpkins, real and plastic, and other orange-and-blacks (Princeton colors). Here’s our chance to deal with death and still have fun. Or so it seems. I spent one Hallowe’en evening in a cemetery with dozens of serious spirit-seekers who were not there to have fun, and I’ll never forget it. Connection to extrusion? In the illustration, plastic bristles on…

Inspiration for medical innovation can come from anywhere. Case in point, University at Buffalo researchers developed a new method — inspired by children’s pop-up books — for creating 3D artificial tissue. Described in Advanced Science, the method is based upon compressive buckling – the structural engineering principle that explains why figures project outward from the pages of children’s pop-up books. In a series of experiments, researchers used the compressive buckling method to…

Guill has updated its popular 800 series extrusion tooling with the introduction of a hybrid multi-layer die. It is designed to facilitate layer overlapping without adding cost or complexity to the process. In some extrusion applications that utilize crossheads and inlines, several layers of the same material are applied multiple times using a single die, explained Guill. This prevents errors caused by gels breaking through thin walls, weld lines, inconsistent wall…

                          Our August 2019 cover story. Earlier this week, I moderated a webinar on robotics and automation from Wittmann Battenfeld. Quite understandably, the presenter, Chris Unseth, regional sales manager for injection molding machinery and robots, began by citing the widespread scarcity of workers as an impetus to automate: “Everywhere I go, I see ‘Help Wanted’ signs, from the…