Newsletter Articles

Newsmakers

February 1, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

Brian McGary, a seasoned information technology professional with more than 15 years of experience, has been appointed director of information technology, reporting to President Jeff Somple.

McGary will be responsible for implementing cutting edge solutions to advance the Company’s short- and long-term technology plans with a focus on increasing competitiveness, compliance and security. He will work closely with all levels of the organization, ensuring the proper technology is in place to support mission critical business operations.

Prior to joining Mack, McGary most recently was service delivery manager at Acrowire in Charlotte, N.C., where he played a key role in Microsoft SharePoint and custom application development solutions. He previously served in positions of increasing responsibility at Muzak and Polypore International. Brian has an associate’s degree in liberal arts with an emphasis on business administration and computer technology from Rowan Cabarrus Community College in Salisbury, N.C., as well as a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Queens University in Charlotte, N.C.

From left, Brendan Gleason, Kelsey O’Dell, Peter Bush, Aaron LeBeau, Matthew Comar and Britney Coley are all former Mack interns who have returned to the Company in full-time positions.

Additionally, six former interns have returned through Mack’s doors, bringing with them an intimate knowledge of Mack’s operations coupled with fresh ideas and the promise of a strong future in manufacturing. They also happen to be a testament to the Company’s workforce cultivation efforts, which have focused on showing the next generation of engineers and technicians how rewarding a career in manufacturing can be.

Peter Bush returns to Mack as a quality engineer after graduating from the University of Vermont with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering. Previously a sales and engineering intern at Mack, he has experience in planning, preparing and organizing resources for class 3 medical device product development studies and facilitating related communication between manufacturing, quality and management.

Britney Coley has been named a program coordinator in the Company’s medical device sector. The St. Lawrence University graduate has a bachelor of science degree in biology and psychology. In her role, Coley maintains program schedules and records, facilitates document control tasks and interface with customers as part of a multi-disciplinary team from across the organization focused on launching new products and improving performance.

Matthew Comar, who studied advanced manufacturing at Hudson Valley Community College, joins Mack as a finishing technician. Comar brings experience in SolidWorks and Mastercam software, as well as knowledge of CNC mills, lathes and manual machine tools. As a finishing technician, he will perform set-ups of various processes, including pad printing, milling and sonic welding, as well as maximize efficiency and quality of production.

Having received his bachelor of science degree in science and technology studies from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Brendan Gleason joins Mack as a quality engineer. Gleason developed a deep understanding of Mack’s medical device manufacturing business as a quality technician intern, collaborating with manufacturing, quality and management to satisfy customer needs for over 300 unique medical parts.

University of Vermont graduate Aaron LeBeau, who has been appointed as a quality engineer, earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. In addition to previously serving as an intern on Mack’s quality engineering team, LeBeau spent a summer working in production. He previously gained experience as an electrical technician intern at Abacus Automation in Bennington, Vt., and brings experience in computer-aided design, quality management and data analysis software to Mack.

Kelsey O’Dell joins Mack as a manufacturing engineer in the Company’s medical business. She received her bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y. In addition to previous Mack experience, O’Dell honed her engineering skills as an undergraduate research assistant at RPI’s Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications Engineering Research Center.

Navigating Resin Selection with Mack

January 31, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

By Scott Rishell, Design Engineer, Mack Molding

As a leading custom plastics molder and contract manufacturer serving a range of markets – medical, industrial, transportation, energy/environment, computer/business and consumer – Mack’s customers are varied and so are their needs. To meet the diverse requirements presented by costumer programs, Mack has vertically integrated services, including design, prototyping, supply chain management, machining, sheet metal fabrication, molding, painting, assembly, testing and even fulfillment. One area where we often find the most distinctiveness is in resin selection.

Mack has a wide portfolio of molded parts, and each is unique based on the customers’ requirements. Beyond aesthetics, like color, a material’s properties, processability and cost all play a key role in determining a resin’s suitability for an application. With thousands of grades to choose from, and new ones being developed to fill market niches, customers often turn to Mack to help them navigate the resin selection process.

Here are some of the key considerations the Mack team makes when making a selection:

Mechanical Requirements
A part’s strength requirements need to be considered as resin classes have various tensile strength, tensile modulus and elongation at break. Thermoplastic resins offer a variety of strength properties that can often be modified with fillers like glass or carbon fiber.

Chemical Compatibility
Many customers are concerned about how chemicals, including cleaning solvents and process reagents, interact with their resin selection. In these cases we consult published testing data from resin manufacturers that show a material’s performance in each chemical. In some cases the data may not exist and testing with specific chemicals will be requested.

Environmental Compatibility
Parts that will be exposed to extreme hot or cold conditions need to be made with resins that are rated accordingly, making the long term service temperature and heat deflection temperature critical performance metrics. Other conditions to consider include exposure to UV light and high humidity.

Commodity vs. Performance
Whenever possible Mack strives to pair customer applications with commodity resin grades due to the inherent cost and availability advantages that come with higher volume raw material production. Some projects call for specific properties – strength, heat resistance, etc. – which is where performance resins excel.

Amorphous vs. Semi-crystalline
Selecting amorphous resins can often be advantageous as they can provide wider processing windows and improved dimensional control due to their random molecular structure. They can be transparent and are compatible with many adhesives. Semi-crystalline materials offer improved mechanical and thermal properties but can be more difficult to process.

Material Shrinkage
The amount a resin shrinks during the molding process can have a huge impact on the ease of building a tool or developing a successful molding process. For this reason we try to select resins that have lower shrink rates whenever possible.

Once all of these factors are accounted for the list of suitable resins is typically cut down to a manageable number to consider. It is here that the Mack team leverages its proficiency with particular materials, coupled with expertise in supply chain management, to make the final determination of a grade.

If you have a part you are ready to put into production, would like to learn more about resin selection or are interested in any of Mack’s vertically integrated services, please visit us at www.mack.com or e-mail our team salesnorth@mack.com.

Scott Rishell is the technical lead on several programs at Mack, developing part designs for production processes. He works with customers to diagnose and implement solutions for design for manufacturability (DFM) issues, as well as reduce manufacturing costs through part simplification and process improvements. He has established an intimate knowledge of design, material selection, tooling and specialty processes for injection molding, including structural foam, and internal and external gas assist. Prior to his current role, Scott was a program manager in the Mack’s medical business, where he gained unique customer experience insights. He has a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Mack Enters Medical Consumables Market

March 31, 2015 by Julie Horst Leave a Comment

Electric presses from JSW are currently being moved into the new cleanroom, which will be in full production by the end of April.

MackMedical/Mack Molding is investing $2 million to expand its cleanroom molding and assembly capacity to handle significant growth in the medical consumables market. “While we’ve been involved in orthopedic disposables for some time, this marks our first foray into high‐volume, single‐use components for a Class III medical device,” says President Jeff Somple. “It’s a critical step that will open up a whole new market sector for us.”

To accommodate the work, Mack is building its third molding and assembly cleanroom at its headquarters plant in Arlington, Vt., which will house electric presses from The Japan Steel Works (JSW). The 3500‐sq‐ft cleanroom will be certified to meet Class 100,000 (ISO Class 8) standards. It is scheduled to be certified this month, after which Mack will begin validation runs.

Beyond the main molding and assembly area, the cleanroom will include space for part conveyance from an adjacent soft‐walled cleanroom that will house a robotically automated 500‐ton press. Servo‐controlled radio frequency and ultrasonic welding systems will be installed, as well as automated particulate, temperature and humidity monitoring.

The electric presses will include two 44‐ton vertical machines and 60‐ and 199‐ton horizontal presses. From JSW’s ‘advanced’ series, they feature a 62 micro second servo control circuit that delivers high‐speed performance with increased precision and reliable quality.

Semi‐automated equipment will be installed to support molding and assembly, which includes overmolding of extruded tubing. The presses will be vacuum‐fed by a modular bank of dryers located just outside the cleanroom.

In addition to this investment, Mack has two other Class 100,000 cleanrooms ‐‐ a molding cleanroom with six electric presses and an assembly cleanroom that is used for non‐sterile packaging of medical disposables, light sonic weld assembly, and temperature‐ and humidity controlled functional testing. There is also a 24‐hour whiteroom operation that houses four hydraulic presses dedicated to small part medical molding.

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