Plastic Passion
Plastics Engineering Support Available through NWIRC
A recent Deloitte & Touche study of Pennsylvania’s manufacturing
economy identifies plastics as the state’s third-largest manufacturing
driver—a fact that the Northwest Pennsylvania Industrial Resource
Center (NWIRC) knows and understands firsthand, thanks to the Plastics
Technology Center (PTC), the plastics engineering unit of the NWIRC.
“We’ve worked with the Plastics Technology Center for more
than a decade, but in 2000 the center moved to our location, and we
developed an even stronger connection,” said David Andersen, Executive
Director of the NWIRC. “They’ve been a tremendous resource
for us, and given the findings of the Deloitte & Touche study, we
see them as a potential resource for all of Pennsylvania’s Industrial
Resource Centers.”
The PTC consults with companies both statewide and nationally, serving
as a virtual engineering department for plastics manufacturers as their
needs for product design and development services grow and change. As
with the IRC, the PTC serves companies with fewer than 500 employees,
providing technical assistance in a wide variety of ways:
- Performing engineering feasibility studies on new products
- Selecting the manufacturing processes and materials that are best
suited to the needs of the customer
- Performing full, in-house product design and development through
the use of the latest in computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided
engineering (CAE) software tools
- Sourcing of prototyping, production tooling and finished goods
- Optimizing manufacturing tools and processes
“The PTC can really help in areas such as new product innovation,”
said Tom Moyak, PTC Project Engineer. “We’ve helped develop
new products for physical therapy, health care, food services and more.”
Moyak cited a project completed for Sterling Technologies, a plastics
rotational molder. Sterling wanted to know if a welded steel water tank
could be crafted instead from plastic to reduce weight and cost, but
the project required engineering capabilities beyond what Sterling is
able to provide in-house.
Using ANSYS computer software, PTC Senior Engineer Marty Dropik modeled
the deflection of the proposed plastic tank to evaluate if it would
successfully hold 20,000 pounds of water. (ANSYS allows an engineer
to assess designs to verify that they will perform as expected in their
end use, using selected materials, under load.)
Dropik discovered that the tank could indeed be made out of plastic,
provided that a built-in base was added to the tank's design for extra
support. The PTC received high praise from Sterling Technologies President
Greg Cronkhite: “I can't imagine not having the PTC. It gives
Sterling access to millions of dollars worth of state-of-the-art technology
to complement what we provide in-house. Our customers love that.”
The PTC also provides the services of its Plastics Computer-Aided Engineering
(CAE) Center to educate plastic injection molders and plastics-related
companies on the benefits of using mold-filling simulation software.
The Plastics CAE Center teaches CAE technology through consortium meetings,
workshops and through individual flow analysis project work. Working
with the Plastics CAE Center takes the guesswork out of a company’s
decision to acquire CAE technologies, and it offers training, expertise
and hands-on experience in technology with minimal financial risk.
The PTC also has links to the facilities and expertise of the Applied
Research and Design Center in Penn State Erie’s School of Engineering
and Engineering Technology (SEET). That relationship permits access
to CAD/CAM, machining labs, machine vision, mechanical measurement and
instrumentation, materials testing, rapid prototyping, metrology and
thermal testing, as well as a variety of engineering software technologies
and services.
Andersen points to the fact that members of the PTC engineering staff
got their start in the plastics engineering technology program at Penn
State Erie, one of only four accredited plastics education programs
in the nation. In addition to Penn State Erie’s hands-on education
and manufacturing research, the group collectively brings more than
40 years of practical industry experience to the search for manufacturing
solutions.
“Given the growth that’s already happened in plastics and
the growth that’s predicted, Pennsylvania’s plastics manufacturers
are going to need technical support to maintain their leadership,”
said Andersen. “The Plastics Technology Center is available to
provide the energetic support that will keep our manufacturing economy
growing stronger each year.”
To learn more about the Plastics Technology Center, go to http://ptdc01.bd.psu.edu/.
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