Earlier this week, another medical injection molder made news when Total Molding Services announced that it has been acquired by Haartz Family Holdings, changing its name to Moldgenix in the process.

In February, Atalys announced that it is tripling the size of its existing facility in the Dominican Republic from 15,000 to 47,000 square feet through the addition of a new 32,000-square-foot building. The company said that the new building will be dedicated to manual assembly with complementary injection molding, pad printing, tool repair, and warehousing. The existing facility will become the company's primary plastics processing site focused on cleanroom injection molding as well as secondary operations such as testing and packaging.

Plastics injection molder Atalys LLC announced yesterday that it has acquired Schnipke Engraving Co. LLC. Both companies provide injection molding and related services to medical device OEMs. Atalys, based in Rochester, NY, said the acquisition will enhance its manufacturing capabilities, technology, and geographical footprint.

Airbus says it is worth noting that manufacturing composite materials is energy-intensive and causes a higher environmental impact. However, several studies have shown that composite structures contribute to a 15 to 20% reduction in environmental emissions over time.

Experts say the carbon-fiber-reinforced composite-intensive structure stood up well to a fire caused by a collision, allowing all 379 passengers and crew to escape via a single emergency ramp.

Intensive use of carbon-fiber-reinforced composites may have contributed to the safe evacuation of all 379 passengers and crew from an Airbus A350-900 passenger jet that collided with a Japan Coast Guard Bombardier Dash-9 maritime patrol plane in Japan. The coast guard plane was reported to have strayed onto the runway while the Airbus was attempting to land at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The plane was arriving from New Chitose Airport on the northern island of Hokkaido during Japan’s busy New Year holiday season.

"Our acquisition of Schnipke was driven by a focused strategy to deepen our capabilities, capacity, and technical superiority across the entire manufacturing process for medical device components,” said Vinc Ellerbrock, president and CEO of Atalys. “The addition of Schnipke adds two manufacturing sites for scalable growth, broadens our geographic presence and reach, enables us to serve a wider array of customers, and significantly augments our technical capabilities,” said Ellerbrock.

Stephen has been with PlasticsToday and its preceding publications Modern Plastics and Injection Molding since 1992, throughout this time based in the Asia Pacific region, including stints in Japan, Australia, and his current location Singapore. His current beat focuses on automotive. Stephen is an avid folding bicycle rider, often taking his bike on overseas business trips, and a proud dachshund owner.

Overall, up to 54% of the aircraft is composite, complemented by titanium and advanced metallic alloys. The A350’s operating weight empty (OWE) is reportedly 20 tonnes lighter than the current Boeing 777-300ERs that it replaces.

Editor in chief of PlasticsToday since 2015, Norbert Sparrow has more than 30 years of editorial experience in business-to-business media. He studied journalism at the Centre Universitaire d'Etudes du Journalisme in Strasbourg, France, where he earned a master's degree.

Schnipke has tooling and plastic injection molding operations at its headquarters in Ottoville, OH, and operates a second manufacturing facility in Tucson, AZ. The company is FDA registered and is certified to ISO 13485:2016.

Founded in 1967, Schnipke has established a reputation for building tools in-house and designing and engineering molds that meet the medical device industry's stringent requirements for precision at extremely tight tolerances, said the news release. The company claims on its website that it can mold within tolerances of +/-0.001 inches and as small as 0.02 grams in weight. Even smaller dimensions can be accommodated upon customer request.

In addition to its headquarters in Rochester, Atalys has manufacturing facilities in Asheboro, NC, and the Dominican Republic. The New York and North Carolina plants have multiple Class 8 cleanrooms for molding and assembly on site; the Santo Domingo site in the Dominican Republic offers cleanroom assembly and automation. The company said it adheres to scientific molding principles and is equipped with presses ranging in size from “near micro molding” to 1,400 tons.

Introduced in 2015, the Airbus A350 is renowned for its fuel economy, with a 25% fuel burn advantage achieved through extensive use of advanced materials (70% by weight). The fuselage features a four-panel construction with thicker composite sections at the top and bottom where strength is required. The wingbox and wings are also made of composites.

Tragically, five of the six crew on the coast guard aircraft perished in the flames caused by the collision, but further deaths were avoided despite only one of the emergency slides functioning on the A350. Experts quoted by the BBC indicated that further loss of life may have been averted because of the composite fuselage maintaining structural integrity long enough for passengers and crew to escape from the smoke-filled plane in time.