The impact of the widening skills gap is of ongoing concern for manufacturers. The 2018 Deloitte skills gap and future of work in manufacturing study reports that the average time to fill skilled production worker positions jumped from 70 days to 93 days between 2015 and 2018, surpassed only by finding engineers, researchers, and scientists which bounced from 94 days to 118 days over the same time period.

Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) Minneapolis (MD&M) is returning to the Minneapolis Convention Center on October 23-24 and you don’t want to miss your chance to connect with leaders across every link in the supply chain!

Nearly half of all plastic ever manufactured has been made since the year 2000. In a scant two decades, production went from 250 million tons to 448 million tons¹ and the race is on to shift the burgeoning over-reliance on plastic to ways that promote plastics’ use as a green energy source.

North American resin production topped out at nearly 28.7 billion pounds April of 2019, a 2.9% increase compared to the same time period in 2018.¹ The uptick suggests that engineered resins continue to find their place as preferred materials within industries requiring precision injection molded parts and devices such as in the medical, automotive, and defense & public safety markets.

Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) resin is regarded as ideal for many complex applications due to its inherent characteristics and injection molding versatility. Is this thermoplastic right for your project?

Medical device performance is inextricably linked to the characteristics of the plastics used. Enhanced properties such as strength, flexibility, transparency, biocompatibility, and temperature and chemical resistance ensure patient safety. They are also mandated by the stringent regulations and classifications of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP).

Worldwide, sales of electric vehicles rose by 73% in 2018 — a banner year by any measurement, but all the more remarkable given it followed sales growth of 86% in 2017. The sales figures are more than impressive; they reflect a shift in consumer demand for affordable, eco-friendly transportation options and the bellwether of change in the automotive industry.

Manufacturers tasked with making products that serve a wide range of functional and aesthetic purposes often turn to multi-material injection molding for solutions – more specifically, to insert molding and overmolding. Since the two processes bear some similarities they’re often thought of as interchangeable, but there are some key differences.

When you approach a custom injection molder to produce complex plastic parts or components, determining if the product is suitable for a streamlined injection molding process is one of the first steps.

It’s generally accepted that roughly 80% of a part’s total cost is determined during the design/development phase, and cannot be reduced – or is extremely difficult and expensive to change – once the design is finalized. However, by utilizing a Design for Manufacturability (DfM) approach and the specialized expertise of a plastics engineer, deliberate design decisions can be made to help manage/reduce total part and production costs.