Welcome
By Amanda Radice,
Newsletter Editor, FSRG
Welcome and thank you for taking time to catch up with the Ferris State Rubber Group (FSRG) Newsletter. The intention of our newsletter is to keep our corporate sponsors, our future employers and anyone else who might be interested informed about what is happening here at Ferris State University.
We wish to thank all of our past and
present corporate sponsors for their generous support of our organization. If your organization would like to help support
our group by becoming a corporate sponsor please send $100.00 annual dues to
the address on this newsletter. By
being a corporate sponsor you will be recognized as such on the official FSRG web
site with a direct link to your own company web site, receive the first
invitations to attend FSRG events and have priority when scheduling a time and date to
come and talk about what your company has to offer and possible recruiting of
rubber students.
At this point, we would like to
encourage you to check out our web page, ferrisstaterubbergroup
@yahoo.com, and check out the things coming up in our calendar. We are hosting a Tire Drive to raise money
from the community – many thanks to Alternate Fuels LLC. for all their help
with that. We will have an
informational table at the Cleveland Expo in October. Many of you may also be aware that we are co-hosting a Rubber and
Plastics Career Fair with the student group of Society of Plastics
Engineers. We want to represent
Plastics and Rubber as potential degrees for hundreds of high school students
who will be visiting Ferris’s campus.
We, the rubber students at Ferris
State University, are interested in hearing from you, the members of the rubber
industry, and learning from you. If
anyone is interested in giving us a presentation about rubber industry topics
please contact professors Auggie Gatt at (231) 591-5337 or Matthew Yang at
(231) 591- 5263.
Rubber Laboratory Improvements
By Auggie Gatt, Professor
Many additions and improvements were
completed in our lab this summer. Our technician Brian Pacholka, really had his
hands full and did a great job getting everything ready for the start of the
fall term.
We upgraded our 1A mixer with a new dust stop lube system and a
rebuilt 30” mill which was rebuilt by Rubber City Machinery and is equipped
with belly bars and an air brake for safety. Both Desma injection presses were
upgraded with new PLC controls with the help of Michigan Rubber. This now gives
us 3 presses, which we own and are not subject to being removed due to a
consignment agreement. Mr. Yang has a new toy in the form of a TGA to be used
in our 223 testing class.
Additionally, Brian installed an air operating system for the
discharge door on our original BR mixer. The 20” mill and hot feed extruder
were relocated and Federal-Mogul donated a nice compression-transfer press. We
also received a lot of raw material thanks to generous donations from many
companies. Five years into the program and we have yet to pay for any
materials. We really need to thank these donors whenever we see them!
Over
$250,000 was spent in the lab. These
improvements will make for better learning experiences and, hopefully, help in
our recruiting efforts. We should be proud of our lab and make the most of it!
Mr. Yang demonstrates how
to use the new DSC and TGA.
Emerging LIM Technology
By Ryan D. Cutler
Today’s volatile and competitive
market place requires rubber molders to cut both material and operating costs
to remain ahead of the competitor. Many
North American molders have been following the latest trends in Europe and are
starting to add Liquid Injection Molding (LIM) to their repertoire of
capabilities. This process utilizes
liquid silicone rubber that exhibits excellent physical properties over a wide
range of temperatures along with UV and chemical resistance. These qualities make it feasible to mold a
myriad of parts utilizing LIM technology that would otherwise be molded using
either high consistency silicone or other organic rubber in a conventional molding
process such as injection or compression molding. Liquid Injection Molding is used extensively in the medical
industry because the silicone used does not come into contact with the outside
environment and silicone is biocompatible with the human body.
The aforementioned
qualities aren’t what make the process more profitable than any other
process. It is by the use of cold
runner molds and direct injection nozzles or valve gated nozzles that virtually
no scrap is produced. Any professional
in today’s rubber industry knows that the majority of a part’s total cost is
tied up in material. The high precision tooling used in LIM eliminates scrap
material loss and results in higher profits.
Operating costs are drastically reduced because most well designed LIM
work cells are fully automated through the use of ejectors and robotics, thus
resulting in no direct labor. One
disadvantage with this process is that it takes a good deal of patience and
attention to detail for the process to run as intended.
I personally had hands
on experience with LIM through an internship with Freudenberg-NOK. It was intriguing to me that the molding
process was so lean, precise and unlike anything I had ever come in contact
with before. Although we do not learn
about the molding of liquid silicone rubber at Ferris State University, I was
able to use my knowledge obtained there regarding the rheology of rubber,
tooling, and the injection press to quickly understand what was happening
without much training from my supervisor.
I was then able to assist in the improvement of each molding cell
because I now felt comfortable and had a “LIM” mindset. While this is only one instance of a
successful internship it is an example of how undergraduate students from the
rubber engineering technology program at Ferris State University have the
technical competence to hit the ground running within any rubber molding
environment.
A Word from a Rubberhead
By Todd Kamyszek, Vice President, FSRG
Three years ago when I
started in the rubber program the mention of a rubber group meeting put a funny
grin on my face, the interesting thing is that I still get that funny grin not
because of the associations that come to mind from the name but because of the
rubber junkies that show up to the events.
Also known as rubber heads or rubbernecks, these individuals led me to
wonder how in the world can someone be so into rubber? Three years later I find myself crawling
under cars to look at rubber parts and holding a rubber part in my hands trying
to figure out what it is, how it is made, and how I can make it better.
Once again the West
Michigan Rubber Group will be holding their fall technical meeting on the
campus of Ferris State University. For
the past few years the National Elastomer Center has been the home of the
technical seminar. This meeting is
beneficial to both students and industry members, giving each a better
understanding of new industry developments along with exposure to the education
received by rubber students at Ferris.
It’s because
of the acceptance the rubber program has received from groups like the West
Michigan Rubber Group, the Rubber Manufacture’s Association, the Rubber
Division of the American Chemical Society, along with the rubber industry that
the students at Ferris are very excited about their future in the rubber
industry.
Thanks to the
Industry for Support
By Matthew Yang, Professor
I am really very grateful to have so much support from the
rubber industry in so many different ways.
We have received a variety of rubber and chemicals donated by the
industry, enough to last one year, for our hard-working students to get their
hands dirty and sticky and to become skillful rubber technologists. Our
feed-back to the rubber industry is to ensure the quality of our education. The
other way of showing our appreciation is to present the results of our work. We
have taken advantage of having West Michigan Rubber Group annual technical
meeting held at Ferris to present latex technology and
TPV processing in the past two
years.
DuPont-Dow Elastomers
has been sponsoring two special studies each year. Steve Colins and Dustin
Greiner, two of our recent graduates, took the challenge last year. They did
great jobs in finishing the studies of TPV and curing systems for roofing
application of Nordel MG™. With strong
support from DDE, we are planning to present new studies in the coming Rubber
Division meeting in Grand Rapids next spring. I have been in numerous technical
meeting. Kathy and Abraham, you are going to have a lot of fun. We are also in
the final stage of planning a special study with Rhein Chemie. Russ Kraft, our
graduate, is coordinating this project.
Again, we are given a
spot by WMRG to present our continuous work on TPV in the
coming November annual technical seminar.
Is there other better way to show
our friends in the industry how much we enjoy using the equipment and materials
donated by them?
Rubber
and Plastics Career Fair
By Kathy Frank,
President, FSRG
The first Ferris State University
Rubber and Plastics Career Fair will be held on the FSU campus October 17,
2003. More than 200 high school
students will attend and learn about rubber and plastics, meet several company
representatives who will display products created by rubber or plastics technologists
and tell students about careers they can choose. They will observe laboratory demonstrations, hear a panel of
recent FSU graduates, visit tabletop exhibitions, and find out about Ferris
State's 4-year and 2-year Rubber and Plastics degrees.
For teachers and chaperones
attending we have scheduled a workshop entitled "Rubber and
Plastics". Lynn Higgins of the
Polymer Ambassadors will be presenting.
The workshop will provide hands on learning activities that attendees
can take with them to their classrooms and share with their students.
We made quite an impression on the
National Association of Manufacturer's (NAM) Center for Workforce Success with
the planning of our Career Fair and they awarded us a grant to help with event
expenses. Part of the grant money will
help offset transportation costs of the attending schools. We will also be recording the event in
PowerPoint so that other schools can mimic our efforts.
Special thanks are extended to Kevin
Ott of the RMA and to Michael Bulawa, ExxonMobil for their assistance and
advice in planning the event.
We would
like to be able to distribute this semi-annual newsletter online. If you are interested in receiving our
newsletter in the future, please email [email protected]
to be included on our mailing list.
Another option is to log on to our website at www.geocities.com/ferrisstaterubbergroup. At the website one can find a lot of
information about our student organization. We hope
you enjoy this newsletter and we always welcome any questions or comments.
Interning
with Freundenberg-NOK
By Abraham
Z. Levy
Two
years ago I started interning for the world’s largest seal manufacturer,
Freudenberg-NOK. My first internship
took me down to Georgia. The
experience of living and working in Georgia was incredible. I spent countless hours molding products,
working in their rubber-to-metal bonding line, quality control, testing,
secondary operations, and going through every step of a project development
process. I really got a complete
picture of how a plant operates, the value of teamwork, the significance of
establishing a good relationship with floor personnel, and the importance of
embracing new technology.
I also did the typical amount of
paperwork required of an engineer.
This freed-up my boss’s time to do more productive things for the
company such as developing new products and markets. The experience greatly contributed to my learning of project
management, the design process, and new product development. At the second plant in LaGrange, Georgia I
got to work with a great group of people.
I got to do time-studies, and use more of the industrial engineering
skills I learned at Ferris. I also got
to work with many different materials, seals, and testing equipment.
This past summer I interned at
International Seal, Freudenberg-NOK’s aerospace division in Santa Ana,
California. I wanted to try something
different and the
aerospace industry looked quite appealing to
me. The experience was invaluable to
say the least. I participated in many
kaizens and continuous improvement projects, and had the opportunity of seeing
the sealing business from an aerospace perspective instead of an automotive
perspective.
I
learned and saw “lean” at its best.
The internship was well-structured and challenging in terms of the
amount of projects we took on and the time frame to complete them. Everyone from top management to the press
operators played an important role in making this internship the best one. Everyone worked as one big team. I had never worked in a place where you
consider 150 employees “your close family”.
What impressed me most about the plant in California was how involved
employees were in the decision making process and how important their input was
to management. You read about it in
books, but they practice it. I was very
fortunate to be part of this team and family.
And finally, I got to speak more Spanish than English in
California. It was kind of weird at first,
but I loved it. Tacos, Sushi, great
weather, great company……what more could you ask for?
Thank you very much for taking the time
to read our semi-annual Ferris State Rubber Group newsletter. Be on the look out for one in the spring,
2004.
