New entries in the Plastics Hall of Fame

This was announced by The Society of the Plastics Industry. The nine inductees are:

• Robert Barr, developer of design concepts for plasticating screws now used throughout the plastics machinery sector; innovator and entrepreneur in blow moulding equipment.

• Paul N. Colby, designer, manufacturer, and entrepreneur in the field of feed screws for plastics processing machinery.

• Trevor Evans, whose leadership in plastic packaging included innovative work in package design and manufacture and executive management of key packaging firms.

• Prof. Paolo Galli, polymer chemist and resin company executive whose developments in the field of polymerisation catalysts led to the creation of new types of polyolefins.

• James Hendry, inventor of a wide range of injection moulding and structural foam machinery systems and developer of gas-assisted injection moulding.

• Ralph A. Noble, compounding innovator and executive who pioneered the use of plasticisers for flexible vinyl and crosslinked polyethylene for wire and cable.

• Georg Schwartz, executive who became head of a small Austrian engineering firm and developed it into a global injection moulding machinery manufacturer.

• Robert Swain, pioneer in the development of applications for polypropylene, then in the production of colour masterbatches as founder and head of a leading supplier firm.

• Dr. Donald Witenhafer, polymer chemist whose inventions in PVC polymerisation ended the threat of cancer caused by vinyl chloride emissions during resin production.

Biographical details of the inductees:

Robert Barr

Mr. Barr was born in Columbus, Ohio and in 1954 graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Following a stint in the U.S. Army, Mr. Barr joined Waldron Corporation as a development engineer where he invented an air sensing web guide and was granted his first patent on an Adsert machine for placing removable mailing ads on newspaper pages.

In 1960, Mr. Barr went to work for Hartig Plastic, the machinery division of John Waldron, where he headed up customer service and the development laboratory. While there he developed several new screw designs, including a patented pin type screw that improved melt homogeneity by breaking up flow in the metering section. By 1966 Mr. Barr was Research & Development director for the Waldron Hartig Division of Midland Ross Corporation with responsibility for the web processing and plastic processing customer service and R & D. It was here that he developed and patented the "BARR" screw that used separation of solids and melt to ensure that there is no unmelted polymer in the extrudate. This concept is widely used today by all screw designers. Mr. Barr was also responsible for the development of Hartig blow moulding machines, including accumulator and reciprocating screw types.

In 1969 Mr. Barr was named sales manager of Waldron Hartig and assigned to primarily blow moulding and extrusion machinery. In this capacity he increased sales by 178 percent and developed excellent sales and technical contacts for the company. In his career at Hartig, Mr. Barr made over 200 presentations on screw design to various meetings of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE).

Mr. Barr organized his own company in 1972 as Barr Polymer Systems, Inc. in order to develop and market improved blow moulding machinery. He oversaw the development of the Hsu accumulator head for blow moulding and the Hsu patent for the Maxmelt screw design, a barrier type screw. Barr Polymer Systems was sold in 1974 to the Uniloy Division of the Hoover Ball and Bearing Company, a manufacturer of reciprocating screw blow moulding systems for the plastic bottle industry, especially for milk bottles. As technical director in charge of customer service, R & D, Mr. Barr oversaw the incorporation of the Barr Polymer Systems accumulator blow moulding machinery into the Uniloy product line. When Cincinnati Milacron later acquired the Uniloy business, the Barr Polymer Systems/Uniloy machine became Milacron's initial accumulator head blow moulding machine.

Mr. Barr and associate Dr. Chan I. Chung founded Robert Barr, Inc. in 1972 and subsequently designed and marketed the BARR 2 barrier type screw, patented by Dr. Chung and used for all extrusion, injection moulding and blow moulding applications. They went on to develop and patent several new products, including the BARR 2000 and the VBET screw. In addition to all of his work and patents on plastics machinery screws, Mr. Barr has also been awarded a number of patents on mixing devices for extrusion.

Paul N. Colby

Mr. Colby graduated from Princeton University in 1950, having earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Following a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy where he served as radio and signal officer on the USS Rendova, Mr. Colby joined Winner Manufacturing as an engineer. There he designed, built, and helped test a pontoon bridge for the U.S. made largely from reinforced plastic. At the time, at sixty-feet in length, it was one of the largest reinforced plastics items ever built.

By the mid-1950s Mr. Colby had decided he wanted to pursue a career in designing and manufacturing feed screw systems for plastics processing machinery. Over the next 18 or so years, Mr. Colby worked for several companies, including Union Carbide, Sterling Extruder, Metropolitan Machinery, Davis Standard and Prodex as a sales and product manager for resins, auxiliary equipment and machinery. In 1970, Mr. Colby was named vice president of Sales and Engineering and later general manager of the Feed Screws Division of Union Carbide/New Castle Industries.

After eight years at Union Carbide, Mr. Colby struck out on his own to establish Spirex Corporation in 1978. He has built the company to a more than $20 million internationally recognized enterprise producing screws and barrels for plastics machinery. Under his direction, Spirex has pioneered many methods of screw design and production that have resulted in processing advancements, led to higher quality parts and improved production for processors. Mr. Colby retired as president of Spirex in 1998 but still serves as the company's chairman.

Trevor Evans

Mr. Evans graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and Chemistry. At the time, his heart was set on being a geologist, but instead he decided to take the advice of an old man in Queenstown who with great wisdom recommended he pursue a career in plastics. Mr. Evans listened and subsequently applied for every job he came across that had the word "plastics" in it.

Mr. Evans joined the plastics division of Metal Box R.S.A. as a lab assistant. He researched various types of plastic packaging for food, beverages, toiletries, and chemicals, evaluating their performance versus alternative materials. In 1977, Mr. Evans negotiated with Coca-Cola Co., then managed the first PET bottle plant for producing beverages outside of the United States.

By the time Metal Box was acquired by Nampak Ltd. in 1983, Mr. Evans was working as managing director of the plastics business unit. In 1985 he was named divisional chief executive of the merged plastics packaging businesses of Metal Box and Nampak. In 2003, Mr. Evans was named chairman of NamPak Ltd., a position that he retains today.

During his career, Mr. Evans has been honoured with several humanitarian and business-related awards, including being named by the Black Management Forum as the "Most Progressive Chief Executive in South Africa," an award that recognized his leadership role in the transition period from apartheid to democracy. He has also received the Gold Medal Award from the Plastics Federation of South Africa for exceptional service to the plastics industry.

Paolo Galli

Professor Galli earned his degree in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Padua and soon after, in 1962, started his career as a researcher at Montecatini, a business unit of Italian chemical company Montedison SpA. His immediate supervisor in the laboratory was Professor Giulio Natta, who along with Karl Ziegler developed the Ziegler-Natta catalyst technology used to produce polyolefins.

By 1966, Professor Galli was director of engineering research and pilot plants for Montecatini and during this period he successfully developed advanced catalysis for ethylene polymerization. In 1969, he was named director of Basic Research and Process Development throughout the polyolefin field at Montecatini. In 1976 he reorganized the company's Ferrara Research Center and as its director transformed it into a world class centre of excellence in polyolefins research. It is now named the Giulio Natta Research Centre.

Professor Galli was named vice president of Technology for Himont, a joint venture company organized by Hercules Inc. and Montedison SpA. Three years later in 1989 he was named managing director of Montedison Research, and from 1996 to 1999 Professor Galli was president of Montell Technology Company. He currently serves as a scientific advisor for Borealis Polyolefibe GmbH in Austria. During his career, Professor Galli developed many advanced catalyst systems that have led to vast improvements in the properties and versatility of polyolefin resins. He developed processes for Catalloy, Spheripol, Spherilene and Spherizone technologies.

James Hendry

Mr. Hendry, often referred to as "the father of gas-assisted injection moulding," grew up in Hamilton, Scotland and began work in 1938 for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. There he operated a compression moulding machine and became an apprentice mould designer. He moved on to Electric Autolite in Bay City, Michigan as a mould designer and later worked for Pro-Phy-Lac Brush Company in Florence, Massachusetts as chief mould designer. His work there included mould designs of the battery box in the F-80 Shooting Star military aircraft; the work involved the conversion from a standard Lester Torpedo injection moulding machine to a two-stage stationary screw pre-plasticizer that melted plastic and conveyed it to a fixed volume injection cylinder from which the plastic was injected into the mould. The changes increased the shot size to 64-ounces and allowed for a two-piece design for the battery case.

In 1947, Mr. Hendry moved to Saginaw, Michigan where he went to work for Jackson & Church as general manager, and later vice president, of the Plastics Machinery Division. During this time he was awarded several patents on the design of two-stage injection moulding machines. He also patented the first machine capable of injection moulding un-plasticised polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the development of which led to the foundation and his co-ownership of Tube Turns Plastics, a company that made pipe fittings and valves from PVC.

Mr. Hendry's interests turned to structural foam moulding in 1959 when he took a job as vice president of the Equipment Division of Marbon Chemical Company, a unit of Borg Warner Corporation. Here he developed structural foam moulding machines and he also developed other unique features for other plastics processing equipment.

In 1970, Mr. Hendry became president of Ex-Cell-O Corp.’s Plastics Components Division where he designed structural foam machines and set up the company's custom moulding plant. He also worked closely with companies like IBM, Burroughs and Xerox to develop many innovative custom moulded products, for which he received numerous awards. Despite all of his work on structural foam moulding, Mr. Hendry was not able to eliminate the major drawback of the process, the swirl-like finish on the moulded part.

By 1981, Mr. Hendry was ready to go back into business again and he organized a company in Detroit called KMMCO where he developed an early internal gas moulding process named Smooth Surface Technology and later became known as "gas-assisted injection moulding." He went on to become an independent consultant specializing in the development of advanced injection moulding techniques. Several of his gas-assist patents were assigned to Peerless Foam Moulding Ltd. in England, which later changed its name to Cinpres. Mr. Hendry also worked with GAIN Technology of Detroit on gas-assist technology. Other clients include Asahi Kasei of Japan, Sajar Plastics of Ohio, and Ford Motor Company's captive moulding operations. By now, his development work on gas-assist injection moulding had sparked an entirely new auxiliaries industry, not to mention long legal battles between Cinpres and GAIN. But he wasn't finished. In 1994, Mr. Hendry began patenting a new gas assist process that he named External Gas moulding (EGM). The process helped eliminate internal mould stress and sink marks.

Ralph A. Noble

Mr. Noble graduated from the University of Toronto in 1950 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering. Upon graduation he went to work for B.F. Goodrich
Company and later Canadian Industries Limited (C-I-L) gaining experience in vinyl and polyolefin technology, respectively. In 1961, he moved to Carlew Chemicals Limited, a company that later became Synergistics Industries, a plastics compounding firm in Mississauga, Ontario. At Synergistics, Mr. Noble pioneered the use of plasticizers in flexible vinyl compounds and cross-linked polyethylene for the wire and cable industry.

Mr. Noble's efforts were instrumental in allowing Synergistics to grow from a single compounding facility to a firm that established four compounding plants in Canada and two in the United States. The company’s annual sales grew tenfold to approximately USD 300 million, with a special expertise in developing wire and cable compounds.

He was named president and chief executive officer in 1983 and gained a personal reputation with customers and employees alike for his use of long-term objectives to direct and drive the current decision making process.

Mr. Noble became an avid supporter of technical programs with the Universities of McGill, Montreal, Toronto and Waterloo and was an avid supporter of the National Research Council of Canada. He was involved in plastics industry societies and trade organizations from the beginning of his career. He served as president of the Quebec Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) section in 1954 and went on to become the first non-American president of SPE International in 1970. He was made a Distinguished Service Member of SPE in 1971.

Georg Schwartz

Mr. Schwartz is a Croatian native, educated first in Croatia and later studying mechanical engineering at the Technical High School in Linz, Austria. He was awarded an apprenticeship as a machine fitter in 1951 and one year later was named a master machine fitter, having in the meantime attended night school taking classes in business management and skills.

While at school, Mr. Schwartz met and later married Ms. Irene Engel and joined her father's mechanical engineering company, Ludwig Engel KG. A year later the company introduced its first injection moulding machine. By 1957, Mr. Schwartz was head of sales for the company and began to build a global sales network with subsidiaries and representatives outside Austria for sales of the company's equipment.

Ludwig Engel died in 1965 and Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz took over management of the business, investing heavily in new manufacturing plants and more cost-effective production methods. At the time, there were 380 employees in the company. With continued global expansion and the establishment of Engel production facilities in Austria, Canada, the United States, China, Korea and the Czech Republic, the company has established itself as a leader in injection moulding machine products and technology.
Today Engel employs more than 3,700 people around the world and holds double-digit market share in Europe and North America. Engel is still owned by the Schwartz family, although Mr. Schwartz is retired from day-to-day involvement in the business.

Robert Swain

Mr. Swain earned his degree in Chemical Engineering at Lafayette College in 1951 and went to work for the Bakelite Division of Union Carbide. Following a merger with Vinylite, Mr. Swain was assigned to a Vinyl Fellowship at Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh. Working as a technical representative for Carbide and later Enjay (Exxon) he was moved into sales management and became involved in new applications for polypropylene, including the first commercial use of the material for a Ford Motor Company steering wheel. He continued to formulate polypropylene compounds that went on to become industry standards in electronic, houseware and appliance applications.

As reciprocating screw injection moulding machines gained in popularity during the mid-1960s, Mr. Swain became aware of the growing need for masterbatch products and in 1967 formed his own company, Chroma Corporation. The facilities were humble, with 1,500-square feet of leased space and three employees. But his experience and knowledge of more concentrated masterbatches led Chroma to occupy a leading-edge position and pioneer more economical methods for adding color. Chroma went on to become the first color house to offer GMP custom colours for the pharmaceutical industry. This spurred growth to the point that a second plant was added, with a total company footprint of 120,000-square feet and employing125 people.

Mr. Swain had other interests as well. He was an experienced sailor and in the early 1970s started a sailing school in his community to teach neighbourhood kids how to sail on a local lake. His teaching experience led to the formation of a series of seminars on In-Plant-Colour-Control. These became so popular that he had to move the seminars from a conference room; he established classroom/library that would accommodate up to 30 people and named it after a friend as The Ralph Stanziola Learning Centre, where more than 500 people attended seminars on the fundamentals of colour technology.

After a fire at Chroma's McHenry, Illinois plant in the mid-1980s, Mr. Swain had to find a way to continue to serve customers. For four days he shipped products from a competitor’s plant owned by Bill Bradbury's family, and production was transferred to the company's Elk Grove, Illinois plant. In the meantime the McHenry plant was rebuilt and expanded.

Mr. Swain became a plastics industry activist in the early 1990s when he took on what he called "junk science" about the use of heavy metals in pigments. He vigorously defended the color industry with a series of letters and technical presentations in response to introduction of the "CONEG" bill. Mr. Swain is a managing director of the Plastics Pioneers Association and is attempting to establish a mentoring program between the PPA and undergraduate students in colleges and universities across the nation.

Donald Witenhafer

Dr. Witenhafer received his Ph.D. in Polymer Science from Case Western University in 1968 and went to work for B.F. Goodrich. As a scientist in the company's PVC business, Dr. Witenhafer became caught up in a serious inquiry on findings reported by a B.F. Goodrich plant physician that recognized the incidence of a rare form of liver cancer among employees involved in cleaning PVC suspension reactors. The discovery motivated environmental groups to call for an immediate ban on the manufacture and use of PVC.

Extensive research at B.F. Goodrich led to findings that PVC decomposes upon heating at processing temperatures in an extruder, releasing small amounts of hydrochloric acid. Scientists were challenged to find a way to reduce the residual, un-reacted, vinyl chloride monomer in the polymer to very low concentrations before it left the resin plant. At the same time, a method had to be developed to eliminate all emissions from the manufacturing plant.

Dr. Witenhafer is credited with saving the PVC industry with inventions that solved both of these problems. First he developed a formation mechanism in PVC suspension polymerization that generated a particle structure which allowed for the release of vinyl chloride monomer. Next he co-invented a steam stripping system in which resin in a water slurry is fed into the top of a column having trays. As the resin trickles down the column, it comes in contact with the steam that enters from the bottom of the column and moves upward, carrying with the slurry coming out of the bottom.

Dr. Witenhafer went on to develop a "closed poly" system where the polymerization vessel is opened only after running a large number of polymerisation batches. Using a water-based reactor coating that helps to prevent build-up on the reactor walls, the reactor could be cleaned in a closed mode of operation. Today, almost all PVC plants use the water-based, absorbable clean reactor applied with steam pressure. Over the last 25 years there have been no liver cancer cases associated with vinyl chloride monomer.