As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving and go on a food binge (followed by a shopping binge on Friday), PlasticsToday hopes that the gathering of the tribes around your table remains a peaceful, civilized affair. If we can get past the polarization for a minute, it’s undeniable that we have much to be thankful for and that we all have much more in common than what divides us, as someone…
The resin markets maintained their slower pace leading into the extended Thanksgiving holiday week. The steady flow of buyer inquiries seen earlier in the month subsided, and most grades of Prime polyethylene (PE) peeled off as much as a penny, as did polypropylene (PP), which was helped by easing PGP monomer costs, reports the PlasticsExchange in its Market Update. Exports account for almost half of all PE sales Upward momentum has…
The industry’s first acrylic rear lens, used on the 1948 General Motors Co. Cadillac Series 60, 61, and 62 models, has been named the 2023 Hall of Fame winner by the Automotive Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). The acrylic, made possible with the invention of a polymer called polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) by Dr. Otto Röhm in 1932, was a game changer, replacing ground glass and enabling a…
It’s been a very busy year for injection molder and contract manufacturer MGS. It acquired Technolution, a Danish medtech product development firm, in June and followed that up with the purchase of moldmaker Winther Mould Technology, also based in Denmark, in October. Back home at its Germantown, WI, headquarters, MGS broke ground on a 120,000-square-foot Innovation Center in September. These acquisitions — supplementing the purchase of European toolmaker Formteknik in 2021 —…
A specialized fuel tank manufactured using Robomold rotomolding technology has earned the Association of Rotational Molders (ARM) 2023 Product of the Year award. Gemstar Manufacturing’s fuel tank features an anti-spill funnel in the filler spout in order to comply with EPA guidelines, which was displayed in the entry sample via a cutaway that revealed the internal features of the tank. Image courtesy of Gemstar In-house tool design and fabrication capability…
November is an easy month to write my column, as there is so much to be thankful for, including plastics, despite our myth-understanding detractors. They usually mean well, but often see plastics as toxic, corporations as greedy, and chemicals as evil and the opposite of natural. If I tell them that water is both, they can’t believe this as they see them as opposites. Worse yet, I remind them we…
The headline of this article is taken verbatim from a Nov. 15 online piece in The Atlantic. That article briefly discusses both plastic waste — nets, bags, fishing lines, and so forth — and microplastics in the ocean, and how they are affecting sea turtles. All the impacts discussed are negative: Plastics can cause death in many ways or serious injuries, and sea turtles (just like humans) are consuming microplastics daily with unknown…
The headline of this article is taken verbatim from a Nov. 15 online piece in The Atlantic. That article briefly discusses both plastic waste — nets, bags, fishing lines, and so forth — and microplastics in the ocean, and how they are affecting sea turtles. All the impacts discussed are negative: Plastics can cause death in many ways or serious injuries, and sea turtles (just like humans) are consuming microplastics daily with unknown…
Progress toward the U.N.’s global plastics treaty was detailed today, Nov. 16, during a stock-taking plenary session at the third Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi. Some members reiterated earlier calls to name 2040 as the date to end plastic pollution. The sheer array of topics discussed thus far — ranging from definitions of key plastics terms to global monitoring of progress toward achieving the objectives of the final instrument…
In what they claim is a world first, researchers at Switzerland’s ETH Zürich university have 3D printed a robotic hand with plastic bones, ligaments, and tendons in a single process. Slow-curing thiolene polymers are the secret sauce in this application. 3D-printing technology that uses a laser to scan each polymer layer and compensate for surface imperfections in subsequent layers rather than scraping them away is also instrumental in achieving this milestone.…