Features

Wearable machine sensors head off equipment failure

­ As Bill Clinton could tell you, being tipped off to a problem before it happens can mean the difference between life and death. In 2004, doctors of the former U.S. president saved him from a looming — and possibly…

RESHORING: MYTH OR REALITY?

­ Popular ideas can be hard to resist. Brian Burke convinced a lot of people that Phil Kessel would turn the Toronto Maple Leafs around, for example. Speaking of things turning around, another popular narrative involves reshoring. According to many,…

Que.-based foam product maker POLYFORM is branching out

­ More and more, it feels like it’s a polystyrene foam world and we just live in it. From insulating concrete in homes to beer koozies by the pool, expanded polystyrene (EPS) and expanded polypropylene (EPP) are everywhere. Including landfills,…

Here comes the 3D-printed car

­ Sci-fi film buffs might remember a late-80s movie called The Fly, in which a scientist develops a machine that instantaneously transfers matter from one location to another through space. “It will change the world as we know it,” he…

Design a BETTER INJECTION MOLDED PART

­ Think it’s tough putting together a decent jacket-shirt-tie combo in the morning? Try mastering the complexities of designing an injection molded appearance part for production runs in the hundreds of thousands. It’s as difficult as it sounds. “Small details…

The latest ANTIMICROBIALS for plastics

Microbes may be nothing more than tiny single-celled organisms, but they’re harder to kill than Rasputin. They’re resilient enough, in fact, that scientists have revived them from fossils more than 250 million years old. They also…

New APMA head talks industry strengths, challenges

­ Canadian automotive parts makers are fully capable of competing globally, but it’s still crucial to retain Canada’s existing auto assembly plants, according to Flavio Volpe, the new president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association (APMA). It all adds up…

Exxel Polymers: sous le signe du succes/Under the sign of success*

Si la route qui mène au succès est souvent parsemée de difficultés, elle est ussi faite de moments charnières au cœur desquels les décisions prises par les dirigeants sont déterminantes….

Big order marks a big year for W. Amsler Equipment

The Beatles sang “It was 20 years ago today” back in the 60s, turning 20th anniversaries into big deals ever since.

A closer look at CPIA Leader of the Year MARK DANIELS

Given such monumental screw-ups as the City of Toronto’s infamous flirtation with a plastic bag ban last year, we Canadians could be forgiven for thinking of these bans as our own unique problem, like snowstorms in May. Far from it….

Athena Automation keeps on building

Processing machinery maker Athena Automation Ltd. is putting down some deep roots.

Charged and ready: Engineering resins for electric and hybrid vehicles

As any blackjack player could tell you, doubling down involves a big risk. But it’s one thing to chance it at the local casino for half a day’s pay, quite another when careers, reputations, and hundreds of millions of dollars are on…

PolyCello’s extended family success story

Repeated selection as one Canada’s “Best Managed Companies” doesn’t happen simply by maintaining best business practices. If it did, probably every third firm in the country would get the nod. Instead, it takes more…

The rise of 3D printing

Sometimes layering can take a long time — as in millions of years. Take rocks. They’re stacked in layers containing fossils, with the oldest fossils at the deepest layers and the most recent near the top. For scientists and…

R&M Plastic Products beats the third-generation curse

Some family businesses just don’t work. Fans of The Godfather trilogy, for example, may recall the brothers in the Corleone mob clan winding up as how-to guides for dysfunction. And it’s not like you couldn’t find a gazillion…

K 2013 WRAP UP: OTHER COOL STUFF

New additive manufacturing machine

K 2013 WRAP UP: MOLD TECHNOLOGY

K 2013 WRAP UP: RECYCLING

K 2013 WRAP UP: MATERIALS

K 2013 WRAP UP: ROBOTS & AUTOMATION