Newsletter of the Polymers Center of Excellence First Quarter 2014 www.polymers-center.org Welcome to our newest employees at Polymers Center of Excellence. Leevon Cornell is a recent graduate of UNC-Charlotte with Bachelor’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Physics, as well as a minor in Mathematics. In October of 2012, he began working for the Polymer Center for Excellence (PCE) as an intern for material testing under Carl Thomas. After graduating in December 2013, he accepted a position as Project Engineer with PCE. In addition to working with Carl Thomas, he will be working with Tom McHouell and Todd Bryant. He also intends on taking all of the polymer and polymer processing classes offered at PCE Todd Bryant comes to The Polymer Center of Excellence with over thirty years experience in tooling design and optimization, polymers processing, production, and training. Todd has acquired a substantial background of both a theoretical and a practical “hands-on” approach towards injection mold design, tool building, injection mold processing and the plastics business. Todd started in the molding industry as a mold setup technician. Subsequently, Todd has held positions including process technician, production supervisor, Quality Manager, Engineering Welcome to our newest employees at Polymers Center of Excellence (cont. from page 1). Manager, Plant Manager, Technical Manager and plastics design consultant throughout his career in the plastics business. He has received five patents for plastic products now manufactured and readily available in the market place. Todd is a graduate of Forsyth Technical Community College and North Carolina State University. He instructed for over four years at Davidson County Community College as an adjunct instructor in the Plastics Technology Program. He is a certified Master Molder Level II through RJG, Inc. He has been a long standing member of the Society of Plastics Engineers, serving as Vice President and President of the Piedmont Coastal Section. He now serves as the Councilor for that section of SPE. Todd is excited for the opportunity to utilize his business knowledge, technical expertise, and plastics tooling and manufacturing background to lead continuous improvement efforts, developing training curriculum and business plans that support the growth of The Polymer Center of Excellence. Newsletter of the Polymers Center of Excellence Q1 2014 Page 2 Fall 2014 PCE Courses & Industry Seminars Aug 19 & Oct 29: Choosing the Right Plastic Aug 20 & Oct 30: How to Design a Plastic Part Aug 27 & Nov 4: Injection Molding 101 Aug 28 & Nov 5: Injection Molding 102 Nov 6-7: 2-Day Injection Molding Decoupled Hands-On Workshop Sep 10: Extrusion 101 Sep 11: Extrusion 102 May 13-16 & Oct 7-10: Paulson ProMolder 1 June 16-20: Paulson ProMolder 2 Jul 22-25 Paulson Extrusion Seminar Oct 21-23: Century Extrusion TwinScrew Compounding Workshop Dec 2-3: Paulson Managing a Molding Plant Newsletter of the Polymers Center of Excellence Q1 2014 Click on the course you’re interested in to get specific information about that course. For general information, or to register, click here . Page 3 The Polymers Center of Excellence is adding Advanced Scientific Processing Courses and Hands-On Workshops The Advanced Molding Workshop is designed to provide students with valuable hands-on machine time to reinforce the methodologies they have learned in the Scientific Processing for Injection Molding class. Attendees will acquire the knowledge they need to dissect a process, rebuild a process using data driven methodologies, improve on it and document the return on investment, or indicate potential improvement areas using the current condition of the machine and mold. Course Highlights include five Machine Qualification Tests and four Mold Performance Requirements Tests. The purpose of the nine tests is to validate machine and mold capabilities. Students will leave with the knowledge and experience to build and document a robust process and process template with the current machine and mold conditions For more information on our , click here . The Polymer Oracle is published quarterly by the Polymers Center of Excellence, Charlotte, North Carolina. Questions or comments? E-mail us at [email protected] or call Dennis Hayford at 704.602.4101. Newsletter of the Polymers Center of Excellence Q1 2014 Page 4