3R Recycling Inc., in Avon, MA, will accept injection molded silicone baby teethers to keep them out of landfills. They have teamed up with Mello & Co., a manufacturer of the baby teethers to try to find a market for the raw materials from these baby teethers. 3R’s number 1 goal is to get them out of landfills.

According to 3R Recycling’s website, they are a plastics recycler, “specializing in purification and granulation of post-industrial and post-consumer materials.”

We love to see companies that help to promote sustainable solutions to improve our environment.

Do you need help with design and engineering of an injection molded plastic product or part? At Lee Plastics, we have years of experience on our team that can provide valuable consulting advise to improve your product. At our corporate office in Massachusetts, we have both design teams and manufacturing teams at your disposal.  Let up help you turn your idea into reality.

We specialize in complex injection moldings where dimensional stability is of the utmost importance. We can analyze your designs and help point out the potential problems and also help you solve those problem.

We offer a handful of injection molding engineering services including:

• Part / Mold design recommendation
• Solid modeling capabilities
• Material selection advice
• Tooling specifications
• Interpretation of CAE analyses

In New Buffalo, Michigan, high school students help build the first 3D printing classroom. Last year, students helped physics teacher, Richard Eberly write a grant for the first printer kit to 3D4EDU. Now the 3-D technology sits on almost every lab table inside Room 238.

“It allows students to design and construct anything in the way they want in lab equipment components that can be built out of plastic, so we use PLA plastic,” said Eberly. The Society of Plastic Engineers funds all of the PLA (polylactic acid) material, which printers use as “ink” to create 3-D objects.

Mazda has developed a new bio plastic that can be used for exterior parts like bumpers or side panels.  This new bio plastic reduces petroleum use which helps save on carbon emissions. This new bioplastic is made by combining the bio plastic base material with additives and coloring agents. They can be dyed any color so they do not have to be painted, which also reduces emissions of organic compounds.

According to Mazda, “This material will be first used for interior parts on the Mazda MX-5, to be launched in 2015, and then exterior components of other production models.”

Get a first hand look at these new bioplastic parts atEco-Products 2014, in Tokyo, Dec 11th-13th.

Bob Kleckauskas, an immigrant kid from Southside Chicago, is the Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Society of Engineers’ 2014 Blow Molding Conference.  Bob started as a plant engineer in 1968 for Walgreen’s and was assigned the task of coming up for a solution for replacing glass shampoo bottles.  At the time, glass bottles were very hard to come by and they could not keep up with production.

“At age 26, he bought three blow molding machines and two injection presses, hired the staff and began molding bottles for Walgreen’s private label products in 1970. Soon, plastics would take over. No more dancing around broken glass shampoo bottles in the shower.” – Bill Bregar, plasticsnews.com

Read the full article about Bob Kleckauskas on plasticsnews.com

For the first time, Lexus is using water assisted injection molded water pipes in their cars. The pipes are going to be the coolant pipes for the intercooler of the turbo charged engine of the Lexus NX engine. Toyoda Gosei, the manufacturer of these coolant pipes are using “in-house compounding technology to formulate appropriate grades for the application that display sufficient durability against coolants.” 

The new pipes reportedly weigh 40% less than conventional steel tubes. “The new pipes, with intricate curves, also help downsize the engine room, whereas forming conventional metal pipes into such shapes would be unworkable.”

To read more about these new injection molded water pipes, click here!

Newlight Technologies, a company located in Costa Mesa, CA has discovered a cost effective way to make plastic out of air.  Literally.

The plastic industry is responsible for 1.8 trillion pounds of carbon emissions every year.  This could be a way to minimize emissions and turn it into something useful.

“Here’s how it works: Carbon emissions are captured from farms, landfills, and energy facilities and are fed into a 50-foot-tall reactor at Newlight’s plant. A bundle of enzymes strips out the carbon and oxygen and rearranges them into a substance they call air carbon.” To learn more, click here for the video and article on CBS News.