Plastics & Injection Molding Manufacturer Blog

NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- So, the boss told you to work from home. Two months ago, it would have seemed like heaven. But now you are in a home office during a pandemic, the dog is barking, the doorbell and the home phone are ringing at the same time. The kids are out of bologna. You have to worry about your health as well as your loved ones and co-workers. Now you are home, but you also have to answer your work phone and emails.

Team Ferriot recently enjoyed a visit from students at Akron's NIHF STEM High School. The students toured our 200,000-square-foot office and manufacturing facilities to learn more about the latest manufacturing processes, technologies and varous injection molding career opportunities from engineering design to quality management. The following photo blog provides you with a glimpse at their tour.

Ron Pack, Manufacturing Engineer, provides students with several new technology demonstrations, including collaborative robots (cobots) that assist with repetitive tasks and allow employess to do more complex work.

This past week, Ferriot enjoyed a visit from students at Akron’s NIHF STEM High School where students had the opportunity to learn how things are made and to see what a potential career in manufacturing looks like.  Guided by Ferriot employees, students toured the facility and received a hands-on experience while learning about technologies used in manufacturing.

Here at Ferriot, an increasing number of our clients are expressing growing concerns over the Coronavirus crisis and the impact of this crisis on the global supply chain. The situation remains very volatile, changes daily, and continues to have a global impact.

This affects injection molding because the industry relies heavily on Asia, especially China, to manufacture a significant portion of the tooling.  A large percentage of plastic parts are molded there as well.  The lower labor cost has allowed Asian countries to deliver tooling at a lower cost and provided OEMs with a reasonably safe supply chain.

Truth be told, although Ferriot has been around for close to a century accumulating an unlimited wealth of experience and applied expertise, we've really only been blogging for a short time. However, since 2020 marks the start of a new decade, we felt it was apropos to share our TOP 10 injection molding blog posts. The front-runners are determined by you, our frequent readers, after nearly 20,000 views of dozens of blog articles on a variety of topics. The majority of these articles are a quick read, requiring only a few minutes to consume. No doubt you'll find them quite valuable. You be the judge...  

The year 2019 was a very special one for the Ferriot team, marking our 90th year in business. Wow! Ninety years! As you can imagine, we've enjoyed learning more about the colorful history and numerous accomplishments of Ferriot's early years. Many on our team weren't aware of our early history with Disney or early Star Wars toys.  The year has also been full of reminiscing over family, friends and business associates that have come and gone through the nine years of our existence. It's only fitting to recap some of them by sharing the following 90th anniversary posts from the past year.

Is it just me, or did 2019 fly by? Where did the year go?

Although Team Ferriot has been very busy this past year, we made sure to cover a number of important topics that help our customers and soon-to-be customers achieve successful results in their injection molding projects. We've covered the gamut, from structural foam molding and custom mold design to ultrasonic welding and selecting custom resins.

Below are featured the best blogs of 2019. These are the blogs our visitors, subscribers and customers have read the most in the past year. Enjoy!

When it comes to plastics manufacturing, choosing ultrasonic welding services compared to traditional welding and adhesive methods offers a variety of benefits.

• Traditional methods of welding plastic components require higher temperatures or chemical adhesives.
• Ultrasonic welding takes less time.
• An ultrasonic welding machine doesn’t require as much power and/or fuel.
• Results of ultrasonic welding are more reliable than order methods.

In short, ultrasonic welding is faster, safer, and cheaper than other means of bringing plastic components together.

Read on to learn more about what ultrasonic welding is, how it compares to traditional methods and some considerations you should take before selecting a plastics manufacturer.

Injection molding is a tried and true manufacturing method that has experienced small, incremental changes over the years. It used to be, if you had a product or part to be manufactured, your injection molding manufacturer would provide you with a list of polymers to choose from. Your design and engineering team would work together along with the injection molding team to select a resin that would suit your needs. A variety of factors would be considered including durability, cost, flexibility and cosmetics.

Ready for a secret? It still works like that.

With most manufacturers, you are going to need to select the resin for your part from a list of available options. However, modern facilities have moved into a more advanced method of providing an option not previously available on that list—custom engineered resins.

Our 90th anniversary celebrations continue as Ferriot is the featured story on the front page of this week's Plastics News magazine!