At New Process Fibre our facility was recently visited by Sen. Chris Coons as he toured Kent and Sussex counties to speak to manufacturers about their companies, future workers, STEM education, and lean manufacturing. This visit coincides with the senator’s manufacturing bill which he hopes will bring together bipartisan support for legislation that will help manufacturers expand operation and create jobs. Additionally this bill would designate 25 universities as “Manufacturing Universities” which would receive federal money to help align their coursework to meet the needs of the manufacturing sector and help train the next generation of engineers and skilled workers.
As a business that was founded in 1927 we are always looking to improve our company. We have not only increased our product offerings but have improved our processes to ensure our customers always receive a quality product. We pride ourselves on our in-house manufacturing capabilities which allow us to perform every step of the process and fabricate our own tooling to manufacture simple and complex non-metallic components. We’ll continue to follow the senator’s bill and keep our readers informed about improving the manufacturing sector. To stay up-to-date on the manufacturing industry you can follow New Process Fibre on Twitter and LinkedIn and to learn more about our company and commitment to quality visit our website.
It seems each month this year we have heard news of the economy recovering and more and more American manufacturers are experiencing growth. Recently, the Federal Reserve reported that industrial production continued to increase in June marking one of the strongest quarters in almost four years.
These reports point out that the increase in manufacturing output points to a recovering economy but there are other reasons behind the increase in American-made products. One is the increase in wages abroad. For many years cheap labor was available in other countries like China, but now their wages are rising.
Additionally, our world now moves at a faster pace and many companies want a quick turnaround on products. Choosing an American company can help customers decrease their lead time and receive faster shipping. However, if a customer chooses a company located abroad the cost might be higher to receive the product quickly.
At New Process Fibre we are proud to be a Made in the USA company and all our products are fabricated in-house which allows us to reduce our production cycle time for quick turnaround. To learn more about non-metallic stamped components, visit our website. Our company is also active on Twitter and LinkedIn where we post more industry news.
America’s energy industry is experiencing a boom thanks in part to shale plays throughout the US. In May the US produced a record number of oil and the Energy Information Administration predicts that in just two years the US will out produce the Saudis.
With oil production in high gear, oil fields, refineries, and pipelines will all be working to keep up with production. This is where New Process Fibre comes in. Our company can produce custom gaskets for the oil industry from a variety of non-metallic materials, such as Vulcanized Fibre, Paper Phenolic, Vegetable Fibre, Silicone rubber, Kligner, PVC, Nylon, and more. Our gaskets also come in a wide range of colors and are available in English and/or metric units.
We also have experience manufacturing epoxy glass washers that can be used in the oil industry. We stamp the washers from NEMA grade laminates and are ideal for use in dry and humid conditions. We can create these epoxy glass resin based washers to adhere to a wide range of performance characteristics and we have over 8,000 washer dies in-house.
Companies that work with the oil and gas industry can learn more about our custom gaskets and epoxy glass washers by visiting our website. You can also request more information or obtain a free sample of our gaskets by visiting our request a quote page.
At New Process Fibre we’re excited to announce that we’ll be attending the Mid-America Trucking Show for the first time. The show began in the early 1970s and has grown to be the largest annual heavy-duty trucking event in the world. The show is held every year in Kentucky and boasts the opportunity for attendees to network with Fortune 500 companies, view the latest products, and connect with new suppliers and potential customers.
Attendees will also have the option to attend informative and constructive seminars presented by those in the trucking industry. The show is will be held from Thursday, March 27th to Saturday, March 29th at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky. New Process Fibre will be exhibiting at booth 67169 located in the West Wing and we’ll be showcasing our extensive range of parts ideal for the trucking industry, including non-metallic stamped washers, gaskets, spacers, and more. We also offer a variety of custom parts and encourage attendees to stop by our booth to learn more about our capabilities.
To learn more about our products, be sure to visit our website and follow us on Twitter as well as the hashtag #MATS to keep with news about the Mid-America Trucking Show.
At New Process, as you may have gathered if you’re a regular reader here on our blog, one of our favorite things to talk about is our custom work. Custom discs, custom end laminations, custom gaskets, custom insulators, spacers, tags, other parts, etc. – you get the picture. It’s our niche, we do it well, and we’re proud of it. The idea we want to talk about today is a particular piece of our custom business that is particularly complex: washers.
If you don’t work in the industry, you may not realize how many different kinds of washers there are, and how many different particular functions they serve. Some of the more common specialty washers (if you can look past that oxymoron) are “C” shape, “D” shape , triangle ID, square ID, hex ID – truly, though, the options are infinite. Many times the shape of the washer has to do directly with the particular application it is for – often bolt shape determines the ID (or inside diameter). For instance, one of our clients has a proprietary square bolt for a particular application, and the corresponding washer’s shape was a direct result of the shape of the bolt’s shaft. Similarly, the space into which the fastener goes can determine the OD (outside diameter). Often a bolt will need to go directly against the edge of a surface – this means the washer’s OD needs to be a “D” shape in order for it to not interfere with the contact between the fastener and the material by being stuck at an angle.
There are a whole host of different washer shapes and forms that we haven’t mentioned here, because again, the shape of the washer can be as diverse as its application. Washers do many things, from increasing friction on contact surfaces, to preventing corrosion between coated metals, to evenly distributing the pressure of fastening contact across a broader surface area. Any conceivable design that serves these and other purposes more effectively can result in a different washer shape. The key advantage with New Process is that we have the capability and expertise to provide you with any size order of nearly anything your designer can dream up.
Contact us today to see how we can help fulfill your need for that particular washer you can’t quite find anywhere else.
Sometimes for one reason or another, manufacturers or assemblers find themselves in need of a large quantity of parts on an emergency deadline. Maybe the original parts you ordered were defective, maybe they never showed up, maybe you were shipped the wrong thing – emergencies in the supply chain are an unfortunate eventuality if you’re in the industry. I’m sure our readers have stories of their own on the subject, someone pulled an incredible late night, working into the morning hours, trying to meet an approaching deadline. We’ll share a particularly relevant one from our end, and explain how we solved the problem.
“One afternoon, a customer called around 3:00pm because he needed 100,000 pieces to some pretty tight tolerances (0.022” thick PTFE, to +/- 0.002”) that day. Mind you, 0.022” PTFE isn’t a very common thickness, and we only had one roll in stock, with no current tooling for the particular dimensions and tolerances he requested. I told him that I’d keep our tooling department over that night to make the tool, and ship it to him as soon as we could. He called the next day asking after the order – I informed him that we had only been able to get about 88,000 out of the roll. He said that would be fine, and to ship them next-day air. When he received them the next day, he told us they were perfect; then he asked for 10 million more.”
Now this is a great story for us at New Process for several reasons: it highlights our substantial high-speed capabilities, and demonstrates how the commitment to serving our customers well pays off – we’re still making those parts for that customer to this day. None of this would be possible without our high-speed horizontal stamping machines. The throughput of the high speed machines also keeps the prices down for our customers, because of the quantity we can run in such a short time – anywhere from 25-50,000 pieces/hour, rather than the average 5-7000 for regular machines. We have 13 high speed machines, with up to a 2.5” OD capability, which affords us great flexibility to fulfill high volume orders for those emergency situations. We value our high speed department pretty highly, because it offers great benefits to our customers in terms of accelerated timelines, and offers us opportunities at business that we simply wouldn’t be able to provide otherwise.
As a true custom manufacturer, we at New Process Fibre have a wealth of experience with the various processes involved in non-metallic component manufacture. Part of this expertise includes the knowledge of how our manufacturing processes affect the different materials we work with, and how to correctly arrive at a given specification within the tolerances that our clients define.
This sort of nuanced approach to components manufacture might not be immediately obvious to many manufacturers, distributors, or OEMs that primarily work with metal. The properties of most metals are such that as a general rule (to turn a phrase) what you specify is what you get. With non-metallic manipulations, however, the rules aren’t so cut and dry; they’re a bit more plastic. For instance, if we allowed clients to specify the tooling they want used for the manufacture of some nylon washers, odds are that the tooling that reflects the dimensions of the final product desired won’t produce that part to within the tolerances desired, because of the way the materials perform within the stamping process. Our more than 85 years of experience allow us to make careful and informed selections for the tooling of each job that will yield the most accurate output possible. This is one reason we tend to form lasting relationships with clients; as our expertise becomes apparent throughout the process, our commitment to attending the end needs of the customer works in their favor, though our initial recommendation of an alternate tooling setup may be confusing.
Each job is unique, and may require different distinguishing features, depending on its end application. This is why we do our best to listen to our customers end needs in order to determine the best way to produce the parts they need – we trust our customers to know what they need, and they trust us to recommend the best course of action for how to get there. While the particulars of the application may change, the materials and process stay the same, and that’s where the expertise born of years of experience becomes invaluable.
