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Plastics trivia and news
The following is a potpourri of items depicting the influence of plastics in our lives. rats and mice... A new markets has been found for plastics. In a move guaranteed to make PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) very happy, a Dutch company has developed a PVC rat for practicing medical procedures. According to a June 29 news report on WBBM, a Chicago-based radio station, the "lifelike latex rats" will be used by medical students in place of real rats, for practicing microsurgery. The report did not specify whether these new PVC rats would also replace live specimens in experiments. In other "medical-related" news, recent technology advances give new meaning to the phrase "having a nose job." According to a news item on the Society of Plastics Engineers Web site (4spe.org), polymers are being used in tissue engineering to "grow" human ears and noses. At an SPE International Award ceremony for Robert Langer, a chemical and biomedical professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Langer discussed how polymer-fabricated ears and noses, with human cartilage cells throughout the mold, can be implanted onto specially bred mice whose immune system will not reject the tissue. "The host mice then nourish the human tissue cells as they grow around the polymer mold." The plastics industry continues to be stable in terms of employment opportunities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data, there were an estimated 1.02 billion people employed in the rubber and miscellaneous plastics products industry as of June 1999, up slightly from 1.00 billion in 1998. Other aspects of the plastics industry, particularly machinery, are also showing growth. A new study by The Freedonia Group on plastics processing machinery predicts demand will increase by almost 6 percent annually to the year 2003. According to the study, U.S. demand for processing machinery is expected to grow 5.8 percent annually, to $2.9 billion by 2003. This will be due in part to material conversions to plastics, particularly in the institutional and transportation markets. Of the machinery demand, more than half of it will be in injection molding presses. Blow molding machines will be the fastest growing market, the study says, with annual demand growing 6.4 percent to 2003. This growth will be due, in part, to the industry's penetration in the traditional glass, paperboard, and metal packaging applications. Demand for thermoformers is also expected to grow by 5.1 percent annually to 2003. For the industry to continue to grow, we need education. Educating today's plastics workers for tomorrow's jobs, particularly on those machines geared for secondary fabrication, is the goal of the 1st Plastics Machining & Fabricating Conference, slated for Oct. 20-22 in Chicago. Topics include: material basics; thermoforming techniques; routing, trimming and laser applications; sawing and cutting tool technologies, etc. For more information, contact either myself at (847) 634-4347 or the Industrial Division Conference Office at (630) 323-7214. I hope to see you there. Click here to go to
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