A photo of Lee Lechner

Lee Lechner

Digital Marketing Specialist

Lee Lechner has been with Echo Engineering for over ten years and specializes in researching, writing, and developing content regarding powder coating, e-coating, compression molding, and injection molding.

Compression Molded Rubber Tolerances

compression molded rubber tolerances

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.

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Custom Masking Designs for Powder Coating and E-Coating

custom masking designs for powder coating and ecoating

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!

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Compression Molding Rubber for the New Era of Electric Vehicles

ev rubber compression molder

"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.

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E-Coat Masking Basics

E-Coat Masking

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.

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How To Speed Up Custom Masking Validation Process

Custom Masking

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.

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Basics of Rubber Compression Molding Tools

rubber compression molding basics

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

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Future of Electric Vehicles: Sustainable Plastics

sustainable plastics

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.

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Injection Molding Basics: Common Surface Defects

injection molding defects

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.

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Automotive Plastics: Effects of Moisture on Nylon

nylon mositure conditioning

Automotive injection molding components require a vast array of knowledge in order to make parts that hit tight tolerances and pass strict testing requirements.  The main elements that we focus on are typically the product design, material, tooling, and manufacturing.  But what can easily be overlooked is how some materials react to their environment after the part is molded.

In this post, we will specifically focus on Nylon (popular thermoplastic material used in a variety of automotive applications), moisture conditioning methods, design elements to focus on, and some of the basics of moisture conditioning in general.

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Powder Coat Masking FAQs

Powder Coat Masking FAQs

Powder coating is a high-temperature coating process that requires specialized materials and equipment. Because of this, we get a ton of questions from not only new powder coating lines but also some of the most well-known brands that have the most advanced paint lines we've ever seen. So, we've created this new list of frequently asked masking questions below to help you out. The goal here is to answer the questions you may have. 

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