Canada’s Jobst Gellert slated for Plastics Hall of Fame induction
Canadian Plastics
Plastics Processes Research & Development Plastics: Auxiliary Equipment Plastics: DesignJobst Gellert, a prolific Canadian inventor and the co-founder of hot runner manufacturer Mold-Masters Ltd., is being ushered into the Plastics Hall of Fame.
Jobst Gellert, a prolific Canadian inventor and the co-founder of hot runner manufacturer Mold-Masters Ltd., is being ushered into the Plastics Hall of Fame.
Gellert’s induction, along with nine other plastics pioneers, will take place during a banquet on April 1 at NPE2012 in Orlando.
The German-born Gellert has been awarded 825 patents worldwide, 199 of them in the U.S. He is credited for patenting the first commercially viable hot runner system in 1965. A Master mold maker, Gellert immigrated to Canada in 1958; with his wife Waltraud, he founded Georgetown, Ont.-based Mold-Masters in 1963.
Gellert’s 1965 hot runner patent addressed what was then a big problem in plastics processing: While hot runners had begun to appear in the early 1960s, they couldn’t be used with a number of resins without burning, splaying, stringing, or other defects. His patent provided for cast-in beryllium-copper heating elements positioned outside the melt channel.
Gellert also invented technologies for melt distribution manifolds, hot runner nozzles, actuation methods, and mold designs that solved many of the issues that plagued the first hot runner systems.
Mold-Masters currently has seven manufacturing locations and 23 service locations worldwide, sells in 78 countries, and employs more than 1,300 people.
Inducted along with Geller will be Thomas Brady, founder of packager Plastic Technologies Inc., of Holland, Ohio; Lawrence Broutman, a research professor at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering; Jay Gardiner, founder of resin brokerage firm Gardiner Plastics Inc., in Port Jefferson, N.Y., and president of the Plastics Academy since 1998; H. Gunther Hoyt, a longtime leader at melt delivery system supplier Xaloy Inc., of New Castle, Pa., and the architect of the company’s expansion into Europe, China and Japan; Robert Kittredge, founder of packaging thermoformer Fabri-Kal Corp., in Kalamazoo, Mich.; H. Richard Landis, founder of Chicago Ridge, Ill.-based thin-wall injection molder Landis Plastics Inc.; Robert Malloy, chairman of the plastics engineering department at the University of Massachusetts; Daniel Maguire Jr., founder of resin distributor General Polymers Inc., in Dublin, Ohio; and Timothy Womer, a screw designer and patent holder who worked at Xaloy before starting the TWWomer & Associates LLC consulting firm in 2011.