Lee Lechner

Quick reference chart for Unified National Threads (UNC/UNF) major and minor diameters | Fine Threads & Coarse Threads

In this post, we are going to take you through a specific thermoplastic material, commonly referred to as TPV (or thermoplastic vulcanizate), that has grown in popularity in the automotive sector and evolved over the years since its introduction in 1981.

When it comes to meeting tight tolerances, compression molding rubber is not going to match what you see with machining a metal product.  Because of that, you need to understand why that is and what factors affect the outcome of your final molded product.

In this post, we are going to take you through a variety of different custom masking designs we've engineered and developed for some of the biggest brands' powder coating and e-coating lines and explain to you their purpose.  What we've seen over the years is that many coaters have issues related to masking, but don't know what the solution would be.  We hope you are able to go through this post and find a solution or inspiration for improving your line's output!

"We've always done it this way" doesn't fly within this highly competitive landscape we're seeing in the elctric vehicle push. This doesn't just go for the technology used and body design. It's something that is tranforming every element of the automotive manufacturing process. In this post, we're going to take you through one of the many areas of a vehicle that needed to evolve with the shift towards an all-electric future.

One aspect of this process that doesn't get much attention until the last minute is the masking process. In this post, we're going to take you through the basics and fundamentals of effectively masking for pretreatment and e-coat processes.

In this post, we're going to address the major concerns powder coaters and e-coaters have when it comes to talking to masking suppliers and what has changed recently to significantly speed up your masking validation process.

Compression molding is an excellent, cost-effective manufacturing method for making a variety of rubber products. But, as of right now, to get professional rubber products that meet specific requirements, visually, dimensionally, and performance-wise, then you need to understand the backbone of the molding operations... tooling.

In this post, we go over the basics of a compression molding tool for rubber components, how they're made, and what makes a tool more efficient

In this post, we cover two forms of sustainable plastics that automotive manufacturers are using or should be highly considering over the course of the next few years: Plastics used on the finished vehicle and bioplastics used for shipment protection.

Have you ever looked at a plastic part and seen some sort of surface defect that didn't look good? In this post we take you throughmost common injection-molded surface defects and the possible sources that are causing them.