INDUSTRY DECORATES PLASTICS' VANGUARD
Five industry innovators and two product designs were
singled out for awards at the Society of Plastics
Engineers' Annual Technical Conference, held April
26-30 in Atlanta.
SPE gave each winner a $2,500 honorarium and an acrylic
plaque.
• Harvey E. Bair, a member of the technical
staff at Lucent Technologies, formerly AT&T Bell
Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J., received the Fred
O. Conley Award in plastics engineering and technology.
Throughout his career, Bair has worked on the innovative
application of thermal analysis techniques to solve
problems with the quality, performance, processing
and reliability of plastics in engineering applications.
Bair, who has been with Bell Labs since 1965, said
during the years he has had fun searching for solutions
to new problems. He strives, he said, to learn "why
something goes wrong and what we can do to make it
better."
• SPE presented Igor Catic with the Education
Award. Catic is a professor on the faculty of mechanical
engineering and naval architecture at the University
of Zagreb in Croatia.
Catic does research in many areas of polymer engineering,
particularly mold making and design. He has instructed
thousands of students in Croatia and other regions
of the former Yugoslavia, and, since 1974, has led
a group of courses called "Polymer Processing."
Catic celebrated the award as a symbol of international
unity in the plastics engineering industry.
"This is a big day for my students ... and the
University of Zagreb," he said.
• Robert W. Gore, president and chief executive
officer of W.L. Gore and Associates Inc. of Newark,
Del., received the John W. Hyatt Award for his service
to mankind. In 1969, Gore discovered a new form of
expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, which led to many
well-known Gore-Tex products, like Gore-Tex fabrics.
Gore-Tex expanded PTFE also has medical uses such
as for vascular prostheses, synthetic blood vessels,
patches for soft tissue reconstruction and surgical
sutures. Gore is the inventor of numerous patents.
• SPE gave its Research Award to Montgomery
T. Shaw, a professor of chemical engineering at the
University of Connecticut's Institute of Materials
Science.
Shaw is an internationally known researcher in polymer
rheology and processing, polymer blends, microcellular
foams, electrorheological fluids, electric cable insulation
and, most recently, polymer recycling.
His contributions include model development for relating
the rheological properties to molecular weight distribution
and fundamental studies in the rheology of liquid
crystalline polymers.
Shaw said he will donate his $2,500 honorarium, dedicated
to his late wife, to a foundation that aids female
graduate students in the polymer science program.
• William F. Patient, chairman, president and
CEO of Avon Lake, Ohio-based Geon Co., received the
Business Management Award. Patient joined BFGoodrich
Co. as senior vice president and president of its
Geon Vinyl Division in 1989. In 1993, BFG spun off
Geon, and under Patient's leadership its operating
income climbed from a $23 million deficit in 1992,
to a $15 million profit in its first year as an independent
company.
Since 1992, Geon has cut business costs by more than
$100 million, while increasing annual sales to more
than $1.2 billion.
Patient also is a past chairman and currently a director
of the Vinyl Institute, a unit of the Washington-based
Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. He also serves
on the board of the Chlorine Chemistry Council.
He said the honorarium will go toward a training
program for future chemical engineers.
SPE also presented two Plastic Product Design Awards:
• The Industrial Product Design Award went
to Tennant Co. of Minneapolis, for development of
the Powered Sweeper Frame.
The frame for Tennant's Model 6080 power sweeper
uses most of the technologies available in rotational
molding. The one-piece, lightweight polyethylene frame
replaces more than 120 existing steel parts.
• The Consumer Product Design Award was given
to Herman Miller Inc. of Zeeland, Mich., for its Aeron
Chair.
The chair was created with a high degree of technological
innovation using a combination of materials, rather
than the typical fabric-covered foam cushion process,
SPE said. Similar materials of dissimilar configurations
were insert molded to achieve high-quality aesthetics
without additional material finish treatments.
The chair, which SPE said maximizes user comfort,
is made of glass-filled PET, glass-filled polyester
copolymer and DuPont's Pellicle polyester yarns.
