Polyethylene Film Extrusion Intro

Polyethylene Film Extrusion Intro
An extruder is a screw turning cylinder or extrusion
barrel. There is a feed hopper at one end of the barrel and
a specially shaped hole or die at the other, where the
product comes out.

Plastics for extrusion are thermoplastics they get soft
when heated and harden again on cooling. When such a
material is fed into the hopper it is caught by the screw
and pushed through the barrel where it gets hot and softens
enough to continue out through the die. The heat is
generated by friction as the screw turns in the plastic
mass. The energy to melt really comes from the motor as it
turns the screw. Sometimes more heat is provided by
external barrel heaters and pre heated feed throat.

As the hot soft plastic comes out of the die it takes shape
of the hole it passes through a long slit makes a film or
sheet, a circular opening makes pipe many small holes make
filaments, etc. Once out of the die the plastic must be
cooled quickly by air, water or contact with metal and
pulled away to be rolled or cut up to the desired
dimensions.

The turning screw can be imagined as trying to unscrew
itself backward out of the barrel full of material. It
can't go back because a bearing holds it in place but its
pushed against the material forces that material out the
other end.

The die at the other end acts as a resistance. The longer
and smaller it is the more screw must work to push the
material out (horsepower required of the motor that turns
the screw).

The extruder operator controls the temperatures of the
screw and the material that enters. The barrel is divided
into zones. each with its own heating and cooling controls.
Barrel temperatures do have to match material temperatures
but are selected as needed in each zone. The rear feed zone
is especially important as it affects the feed rate and may
control production rate. In the head and die there are
heaters and controls also and metal temperatures are
usually close to material temperatures.

Material melt temperature is measured at the output end of
the screw just before the plastic enters the die. It is
typically between 350 to 450 degrees F. but may be more for
certain plastics. If it gets to high there maybe cooling
problems of the material or perhaps chemical breakdown of
the plastic.

Melt pressure is also measured at the output and of the
screw and reflects the resistance of the head and die
assembly. Typical pressure are between 500 psi and 5,000
psi and for tiny dies or very viscous material it may be
even more.

Screw speed is selected usually as high as long as it
produces good product. Typical screw speeds are between 50
and 150 RPM.

Motor amps are measured as a warning to stay below the
danger limits and to show up surging which causes thickness
variation in the material and unexpected changes in
material viscosity (ease of flow). Amps and horsepower vary
greatly with machine size from small machines 5 to 50
horsepower up to huge lines for compounding which uses
1,000 horsepower or more.

----------------------------------------------------
The extrusion of polyethylene materials is really a complex
issue.
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Write a Better Resume: 10 Tips

Write a Better Resume: 10 Tips
Resumes may inspire fear in the hearts of job seekers, but
they don't have to. Just follow these 10 tips to a better
resume:

1) Be sure your contact information is up to date. In this
fast-paced era, we often change phone numbers, email
addresses, and so on. Make sure that you change your resume
to reflect the latest, most current information and to
ensure that the employer is always easily able to contact
you.

2) State your intentions clearly. You should always start
off by stating your career objective—what is your
goal in terms of your desired position and industry?
Explaining this under the heading "Objective" gives the
employer a shorthand indication of exactly what you want.

3) Write in your own voice. It's tempting to use
complicated vocabulary to make your resume and application
more impressive, but more often than not this ends badly.
You may misuse words or give the employer the impression
that you are posturing and overreaching, and that's never
good. Stick to a tone and style that you are comfortable
with.

4) Don't be too modest. The resume is a place for you to
shine. List your accomplishments and explain them proudly.
Let the prospective employer know what you have to offer,
and don't be afraid to blow your own horn.

5) Keep it to one page. Unless you have a very long or
very extensive professional history, you should never let
your resume go beyond one page. Employers want to be able
to scan your background quickly and easily, so keep it
short and to the point.

6) Be specific about your qualifications. Even though it
may be tempting, you should never just send out the same
Xeroxed resume to every company you're applying to. This
may save you some time in the short-term, but it's not
going to win you very many job offers. It's far better to
customize your resume to fit each individual prospective
employer, because this shows the employer just how well
suited to the position you are.

7) Never list your salary requirements. Employers often
ask for your desired salary, but the resume is not the
place to put it. Salary discussions should be left until
later, after the interview, when you have more leverage.

8) Proofread. No matter how careful you are when you're
typing out your resume, there's bound to be at least a few
errors—punctuation errors, spelling errors, grammar
errors, or just careless mistakes that make the entire
resume look sloppy. Don't let a handful of casual mistakes
(or even a single flaw!) undermine all your hard work.
Proofread carefully so that the resume is perfect when you
send it off to prospective employers.

9) Get someone else to proof it, too. Two pairs of eyes
are always better than one. You are often too familiar with
your own resume to be able to view it objective and catch
errors; give it to someone else who can look at it afresh
and proof it more thoroughly.

10) Make sure your resume has a professional presentation.
Thin paper with streaky ink is not a good way to present
yourself to the employer. Use thick resume paper with clear
ink, preferably printed with a laser printer. Remember,
appearances count for a lot!

Remember the 6 P's: Proper, Preparation, Prevents,
Particularly, Poor, Performance.

----------------------------------------------------
Ken Anczerewicz is an author and publisher devoted to
providing time & money saving resources designed to help
students of all ages achieve their financial goals. Learn
how to create your own income stream by clicking here now:
http://www.resourceriver.com

All Customer Feedback is NOT Created Equal: A Guide for Dealing with Disgruntled Customers

All Customer Feedback is NOT Created Equal: A Guide for Dealing with Disgruntled Customers
Customer feedback is a gift-especially from disgruntled
customers, because they represent customers that care
enough to tell you what they really think rather than being
frustratingly neutral in all of your surveys.

So, how do you take advantage of it?

The first question you should ask is whether or not you
SHOULD take advantage of it. Not all customer feedback is
created equal. Oh, no. Some of your worst customers are
price buyers and negotiate away all your profits, are
massive credit risks, waste call center resources, and
abuse your customer service reps. It might simply cost too
much to satisfy them. Cable TV companies found that even
satisfied customers would switch for a 2% discount whereas
big savings wouldn't placate some disgruntled customers.
Too many companies place equal emphasis on all customer
feedback and typically end up see-sawing back and forth as
they make a change to satisfy one vocal set of customers
that dissatisfies their best customers.

To protect your best customers AND your profits, you must
do three things:

1. Prioritize customers according to value
2. Tier the service offering
3. Address disgruntled customers according to their
priority and service tier

Prioritize Customers According To Value

Most everybody will agree that some customers are more
valuable to your company than others. Guided by your
overall customer strategy, use your CRM system to
prioritize your customers according to their value to you.
Metrics might include profitability, share of wallet,
lifetime value, cost to serve, strategic impact, or other
metrics. Once you do so, it'll be clear at both extremes
which customers you need to keep at all costs vs. those
that you might just be better off if they took their
marbles and went home.

Tier the Service Offering

Some customers will buy on price alone and purchase the
cheapest products possible. World-class companies will tier
their product offerings to address the low-price segment as
well as a high-value segment.

Service offerings must be tiered as well. If a customer
isn't willing to pay for additional service, it is critical
that the additional service not be offered or delivered!

This is incredibly hard for customer service professionals
who pride themselves in providing top-quality service. One
very large financial services provider attempted to charge
a premium for premium service, but ended up giving away
millions of dollars in premium service to everyone as their
penny-pinching customers found out that the service levels
were not actually differentiated. Their best customers
were incensed and began cancelling service contracts,
causing further revenue erosion.

Address Disgruntled Customers According To Their Priority
And Service Tier

If the disgruntled customer is a low priority and has paid
for a lower-tier service plan, after offering to upgrade
their service plan direct them to lesser expensive
self-service or online channels. The goal is to do just
enough to prevent a tarnished overall reputation. If
however, the customer is "high net worth" (ie.
high-priority and on a high-service plan), you then must do
everything you can in a high-touch fashion to resolve the
customer's complaint and ensure their perception of and
loyalty to you is restored.

Here are five steps to do so:

1. Understand the customers' complaint
2. Determine how the customer would want it resolved in an
ideal world
3. Develop & communicate an action plan
4. Deliver on the action plan
5. Communicate the results of the action plan

If you don't deliver on the plan after raising customer
hopes, you ruin your chances in the future of getting this
customer to collaborate with you—not to destroying
loyalty and removing barriers to defection.

One step that many companies leave out is that of
communicating the fix/resolution to the customer. Even
though you may have met or exceeded customer expectations,
if you don't communicate the resolution as promptly as
possible, you might as well have outright ignored the
customer from the outset.

Customer feedback (even the negative kind) is a
gift—if it comes from valuable customers—and it
should be welcomed and addressed immediately to protect
your reputation, customer trust, and your revenue.
Feedback from the rest of your customers might be
interesting, but quite possibly irrelevant.

----------------------------------------------------
Curtis N. Bingham, President of The Predictive Consulting
Group, helps organizations dramatically increase customer
acquisition, retention, & profitability. For more
information about his new Customer Experience Audit,
Customer Strategy, or Chief Customer Officers, visit his
website at http://www.predictiveconsulting.com or his blog
at http://www.curtisbingham.com .

Identify and Seize the Opportunities Presented by Irresistible Forces

Identify and Seize the Opportunities Presented by Irresistible Forces
An irresistible force that can be harnessed for profit
growth is often presented by technological change. Here's
an example.

Moore's Law states that semiconductor effectiveness will
double every eighteen months at a more or less constant
price. Computer manufacturers have used this law for
decades as an irresistible force that permitted them to
anticipate the technological changes needed to design their
new machines.

A new opportunity in recent years has been for people who
understood the law well to expand its application beyond
computer hardware to upset the competitive dynamics of
other industries. In the 1990s, Microsoft began offering
an encyclopedia product named Encarta as part of a bundled
package of software to computer manufacturers, or as an
add-on to consumers for less than $100. Traditional
encyclopedias cost many hundreds of dollars, and almost
every family felt the need to have one.

Soon, Encarta was the best selling encyclopedia in the
world and wildly profitable, because its sales grew rapidly
while its costs were very low. The original version of
Encarta was based on a printed encyclopedia sold in retail
stores so development costs were low, and creating
electronic copies is almost costless.

This is an example of a breakthrough solution because
Microsoft achieved more than 20 times the growth and
profitability that a traditional new entrant into the
encyclopedia business would have experienced. By choosing
the electronic form for this product, Microsoft ensured
that it would continue to have the irresistible force of
Moore's law on its side as it competed with traditionally
printed encyclopedias.

But irresistible forces don't always provide helpful
pushes. Have you ever had your plans delayed or put on hold
indefinitely by a change in your organization's operating
environment?

Perhaps fashion suddenly changed, and no one wanted any
longer the kinds of products or services you provide.
Perhaps the laws changed to make the regulation of what you
were planning to do difficult to implement. Or perhaps the
raw material costs suddenly became very much less expensive
for an old-fashioned version of what you make, and
customers flocked to the suddenly cheaper alternative.
Maybe even a change in the weather meant that winter coats
weren't needed in December due to unusual warmth.

Imagine your organization as being a jetliner traveling
across the United States. Because the jet stream flows
generally from west to east, this powerful and highly
changeable wind, this irresistible force, will have a large
impact on your journey.

The average nonstop coast-to-coast flight takes about five
and a half hours. If you travel from east to west, the jet
stream will add more than two hours to the time it takes to
travel from west to east. The difference results from
having the jet stream as either a head wind, retarding your
progress, or as a tailwind, helping you forward.

Of course, if you are traveling from south to north, the
jet stream will also delay your journey somewhat by pushing
you off course and forcing you to fight off some of its
effects as a crosswind.

Here's another example of how irresistible forces can be
harnessed for your benefit. Have you ever watched a small,
slim person use judo to defend against attacks from larger,
more powerful people? The judo user will actually employ
the strength and inertial direction of the attacker to make
self-defense easier.

For instance, if the attacker throws a punch, the judo
defender may grab the wrist of the attacker's extended arm
as it speeds forward and pull the attacker to the ground by
tripping her or him at the same time. Of course, without
the judo, the results could be quite different.

This points out the need for appropriate development of
your skills. Properly harnessed, irresistible forces can
be used successfully in such a defensive way. However,
their most exciting potential is their use in a positive
way to create irresistible growth for your enterprise.

Irresistible forces can be like head winds, tailwinds, or
crosswinds. This article has a very simple message:
Always make irresistible forces work as tailwinds for you.

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Secrets of Customer Service Extraordinaire

Secrets of Customer Service Extraordinaire
"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into
it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it." -
Peter Drucker, (1909-2005) Writer, Management Consultant,
University Professor

I recently had an experience with a local restaurant that
demonstrates the power, or lack thereof, of good customer
service.

My husband, Bill, and I enjoy going out for dinner on a
regular basis. Since we live in a small town, the number
of restaurant options is limited, unless we drive out of
the area. On this particular evening, we decided to "shop
local" and patronize a restaurant close to our home.

Having dined at this restaurant in the past, we knew that
the chef tends to use unusual spices. I made my selection,
but made sure to ask about any spices used that were not
listed on the menu. The waitress checked with the chef and
sure enough he added spices to the pork loin I selected
that were not on the menu. I took what I thought was the
safe route and ordered a plain old hamburger.

Bill ordered a pasta dish, assuming all of the ingredients
were listed on the menu. This was a wrong assumption...
When the pasta was served he discovered it had been made
with unidentified spices that were offensive to him. After
a few bites, he gave up and informed the waitress he could
not eat the meal. She immediately asked what he wanted
instead. This sounded like good customer service, and what
we expected. Bill decided to play it safe and also ordered
a plain old hamburger.

A few minutes later the waitress came back and asked us if
the pasta dish was OK, in other words did he just not like
it, or was it "bad". Bill replied that it didn't appear to
be contaminated or spoiled - he just didn't like the taste
of the dish. The waitress then informed us that the chef
would make Bill a hamburger, but he would also be charged
for the pasta dish.

Needless to say, we were appalled. We informed the
waitress that we would never patronize the restaurant
again, and we would tell everyone we knew about their
"customer service" policy. We then ate half of our plain
old hamburger, which had also been cooked in some strange
unidentified spices, paid our $50 bill, and left as quickly
as possible - never to return.

In the spirit of creating a customer focused, soul-based
business this restaurant owner could have:

1. Shown his concern about his customers by talking to us
personally to find out exactly what we did not like about
the food.

2. Talked to us about what he could have done differently
to avoid this situation in the future.

3. Expressed his point of view in a way that would not
leave us wanting to tell the world about our bad experience
at his establishment.

In spite of the irritation and frustration we felt, for our
own peace of mind we needed to look at this situation from
a different perspective - a higher point of view. When
you're living your life and building a business from a
caring and soul-based perspective, as we strive to do, you
step back and look at the situation exactly as it is - from
all points of view.

Here was a restaurant owner in a small town trying to make
a living in a very seasonal environment. Then along comes
a customer, like us, who doesn't care for the taste of the
chef's creative cuisine. Add to that the difficulty in
making a living and the long hours required to run a
restaurant, and his unwillingness to give us a new meal for
free becomes a little more understandable - maybe not the
wisest choice, but understandable.

I feel most successful, and at peace, when I treat my
customers as I want to be treated. I also know that my
reputation in the community can make or break my business,
so I choose to operate my business from a soul-based
perspective - from the values that are most important in my
life.

When you begin operating your business based not only on
what would appear to be best financially or on what society
says you should do, but on what feels right in your soul,
you will discover the secret to creating a soul-based
business and providing customer service extraordinaire.

----------------------------------------------------
Sandy Reed, Personal Coach, ex-corporate manager, and small
business owner is the Soulpreneur's Coach. Call her when
you're ready to create and follow through with your
corporate exit strategy. Visit her website at
http://www.innerclaritylifecoaching.com for tools and
resources.

Recession-Proof Your Small Business in 2008

Recession-Proof Your Small Business in 2008
How safe is your business if the U.S. experiences a
recession this year? Will it do well, continuing along its
productivity and growth projectory with little more than a
slight re-focusing and tightening of the belt? Or will it
dissolve into ruin, going belly-up as consumers hunker down
by reducing spending?

On Tuesday, January 8, 2008, President Bush gave his State
of the Union address to Congress, televised for all to see.
In it, he stated:

"Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that
grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a
job. After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals
and stock market declines, our economy is recovering
— yet it's not growing fast enough, or strongly
enough. With unemployment rising, our nation needs more
small businesses to open, more companies to invest and
expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, 'Help
Wanted'."

Some small business owners listening to the broadcast
buried their heads in the sand, thinking a recession isn't
going to occur. Some mistakenly believe that the U.S.
government will take care of them if there is a recession.
For others, the cloud of impending gloom has already begun
to cast its shadow.

Earlier this week it was reported that the U.S. economy is
primed to slump into a three-quarter recession. What will
you do? What action will you take to recession-proof your
small business this year . . . or any year, for that matter?

What if there were a simple, effective solution to ensure
your business productivity and growth, no matter what the
economy does? Would you want to learn more? What if I told
you there are ways to increase productivity no matter what
the economic climate — not just by a little, but by
20 percent? Would you be interested?

Seven Sure-fire Ways to Boost Productivity

1. Be known for delivering great products and services.
Now, more than ever, this oft repeated maxim is true. Your
products and services are a reflection of you, are the
frontline calling card for your business, and are the
number one way to make your customers trip all over
themselves referring others to you.
2. Stand out by offering an astonishing guarantee, one so
amazing that others in your industry would balk at offering
it. Delivering on your astonishing guarantee distinguishes
you and gets your business noticed.
3. Add value, not price. Continuously adding value to your
products and services makes you look rich and attractive to
your customers and prospects. Adding price without value
makes you look cheap.
4. Cultivate business with customers who have similar
beliefs and interests. This eliminates having to work with
jerks.
5. Connect to give; don't connect to get. Cultivate
mutually beneficial win-win relationships with emphasis on
the "give" part. Ask not what your customer can do for you,
but what you can do for your customer. Then deliver.
6. Command time and space this year and create what you see
for yourself, not what someone else sees for you. Meet your
own sales goals, provide your own growth incentives, and
keep abreast of the markets so you can remain on the
cutting edge, rather than waiting for someone else to do
these things for you.
7. Forget about last year. Whether you did well or not,
forget about it. Create a new voice. In the words of T. S.
Eliot, "Last year's words belong to last year's language,
and next year's words await another voice."

What makes these seven steps so special? How will they
recession-proof your business? These seven steps focus
exclusively on strengthening your business from the inside,
at its core. They are not dependent upon outside sources or
resources to function or sustain them. They focus on
actions you can easily and effectively take now. No
long-term planning is required to implement them. They are
things that everyone — from solopreneur to company of
20 — can do right now.

Do yourself a favor. Don't stand idly by with a
wait-and-see mindset. Recession-proof your business to
ensure increased productivity and growth this year. Take
these seven steps now. Make 2008 your best year ever.
You'll be glad you did!

----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Susan L. Reid is a business coach and consultant for
entrepreneurial women starting up businesses. She is the
author of "Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The
Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success". Susan
provides intuitive small business solutions, powerful
attraction marketing tools, inspiration, and direction.
Visit http://www.SuccessfulSmallBizOwners.com and download
your copy of her latest free business success article.