Advanced Process Cooling System
Holding Critical-To-Life product tolerances at the press requires top-level performance from both humans & machines.
In order for Polymer to achieve world-class quality for the Life Science, Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, Veterinary and Dental industries, we need to stay at the forefront of injection molding process technology. Getting residue buildup in water lines or inconsistent tower water temperatures fed to tools during production just didn’t cut it for our ultra-high standards. We needed a system that we didn’t have to babysit, and that would give us the confidence we need to reassure our customers that we will always be able to maintain the highest level of quality and critical batch repeatability and reproducibility.
Our solution: we invested in a Frigel Ecodry central cooling system several years ago that pushes process water to Microgel RCD combination chiller/temp controller units at the presses.
This closed-loop system ensures optimal efficiency which is critical for our scientific approaches to pre-clinical validations and device production.
To learn more about this topic, click here to read Frigel’s case study on Polymer Conversions.
Customer FTP Capabilities
Your product confidentiality, is our priority!
Whether it’s our customers’ confidentiality agreements and tool/part prints, or our own processing data/record retention, it all boils down to safety. How safe is our information in “the cloud”? On our servers? Who has access? How is our information protected?
We all worry about information leaks or losing critical data. Therefore, Polymer has two things in place to ensure our customers that all of the data being retained and transferred is safe and secure. Our Disaster Recovery plan requires an annual audit of our IT partner to guarantee that all of our digital files are safeguarded, backed up on a regular basis and always accessible.
[Our policies and procedures are intended to meet the requirements of ANSI/ASQC/ISO9001:2008, the FDA Quality System Regulation – 21 CFR Part 820 Medical Devices (ISO 13485), cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices), customer quality assurance requirements, and the policies of our organization.]
We have also purchased an SSL certificate for our website – you will notice that the address is now: https://polymerconversions.com
This allows us to offer secure FTP (File Transfer Protocol) capabilities that use encryption, and the back-end system is setup to protect users from seeing each other’s information. Our customers & suppliers can now ask for login credentials and receive their own personal page for uploading or downloading anything from part prints, to photos of tools and auxiliary equipment. Even co-workers from the same company will not be able to see each other’s files.
(To protect our customers, these will be Polymer approved users only, and you must contact us to request access.)
To request login credentials for Polymer’s new FTP capabilities, contact Mr. Dan Schwab, Design Engineer: [email protected] (Please include full contact info in email request)
What’s New?
Future Technology & Services
Prototyping – If you didn’t catch it in our March issue, Polymer is now providing our customers with a new option for the lower-cost/much faster service of rapid 3D printed tooling cavities for running pre-clinical development parts in its actual resin.
CT scanning – Polymer has had a relationship with third-party experts in CT scanning, and can currently offer that service to our customers. We believe in its high-tech capability of producing internal part specs (assembly included) without wasting time cutting the part in half. We have been evaluating the ROI of purchasing the technology to offer it in-house, but we’re still collecting data on how many customers would actually benefit from it, how many products our QA department would use it for, and where we would put such a large piece of equipment (safety and efficiencywise). We would love to hear your feedback! Would Polymer acquiring this technology in-house be of use to you? Let us know! [email protected]
People – We’ve added a new Project Engineer; we rehired a tool maker that worked for us many years ago and wanted the chance to return; and we’ve turned hard-working molding
Employee Portal & SMS System
When we chose our back-end website product for the FTP capabilities, we also made sure the platform could include the ability to create an employee portal. As a bonus, the system we chose also included an “SMS” system (text notifications) so that employees that sign up can receive critical work announcements such as snow closings/delays/emergencies, reminders of mandatory meetings, etc.
The employee portal lets our people have access to files with our wellness program information, healthy recipes and our holiday closing schedule. It also includes important things like Polymer’s mission, vision, general policies, our cleanliness expectations, etc.; all things that do not have to be controlled by the ISO/QMS system. It will also eventually include generic training videos and videos from the Bertsch Family on our expectations for safety/honesty/integrity/professionalism & our meaning of cleanliness and work area organization.