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Julie Freeburn |
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Participants Summer Internships 2002 Main Page
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The plant consisted of multiple mixers that made up the mixing deck, various extruders of different types and sizes, and two banbury mixers. During my first co-op session, I was assigned to different departments such as quality control and development while getting first-hand experience on the art of extrusion. This helped me to complete a variety of small and large projects during my stay. The largest project I was given was to design a talc system for one of the existing lines. The current talc system was giving the feed accuracy around 5%, and customer specifications were approximately 0.5%. I was in contact with the plant’s main supplier of equipment for several months to find equipment to meet our needs for this project. The plant was already using one of their feeders for the line, but the feeder’s auger was too long for accurate feeding of talc. The system I designed took the one-ton bulk bags and fed them pneumatically into a new feeder with better features and more precise and accurate feeding. Another large project was to design a system to eliminate the mixers within the process and combine the mixing process with the extruders. The time intensive, as well as labor intensive, process currently in use needed to be modified. This was only in the design stage in the duration of my employment. Since homogeneity is extremely important for a quality product, the mixers could not be totally eliminated, yet they could be modified. Since the bottom line of any company is profit, the goal was to reduce the number of workers needed and the time for each batch to be produced, while keeping the same volume of product if not more out the door. My design accomplished all of the requirements, and the calculation of the company savings was significant. I was also able to extend my experience to another section of plastics within Ferro, the liquid color plant in Plymouth, Indiana. The project was to find a way to mix dry and liquid ingredients in an efficient manner. The final product was a polyvinyl chloride house siding. I spent a significant amount of time with one of the researchers from the corporate research center and an employee from Plymouth to experiment on different processes. Since the color is very crucial, the mixing is the most important part of the process. We spent days trying to find the perfect amount of heat/energy input from the mixer to the product to match the desired color. At the end of the project, the mixing process was accomplished and much was learned by all three personnel involved. Towards the end of the summer, I was invited to attend the sales meeting at the Ferro Technology Center in Independence, Ohio. This was the greatest experience during the entire co-op session. The information I was exposed to during the sales meeting was phenomenal. The meeting took all of the principles that I learned over the last six months and combined them so I could see the big picture. I learned about the sales, marketing, and engineering side of business. |
My name is Julie Freeburn. During the summer of 2001, I spent my second
co-op session working for the Ferro Corporation. The plant that I worked
at was located in Stryker, Ohio. Their market was for thermoplastic color
concentrates. I worked in the engineering department along with two other
chemical engineers and the environmental health and safety engineer.