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As most of you know, in addition to Nonwoven Tools, I own a company called Omega Engineered Technologies.  The primary service we provide is repairing and recovering needleboards.  It goes with the territory that companies send me the worst boards they have.  However, lately I have been seeing many boards with large numbers of impacted needles.  I define an impacted needle as one that has broken off flush with the board and cannot be pulled out.  In an effort to help plant employees with this problem I made an eight minute video of how I remove impacted needles.  If you work in a needlepunch plant, please share this with your employees.  Perhaps it will be of help to them.  After watching the video, you may have some tips for me.  Feel free to send them along.  Here is the link to the video.

Last week I had the privilege of touring the Textile Technology Center located in Belmont , NC which is close to Charlotte.  The Center is part of Gaston College.  The director, John Anderson, was kind enough to show me around.  I expected to see a building housing textile equipment and that is what I saw, but there was much more.  What I did not expect to see were all the high quality laboratories.  I think every nonwoven company should send their lab manager for a tour of this facility.  They have so much to offer in testing services as well as product development.  You really owe it to yourself and your company to stop by and visit with John.  He will be glad to show you around.  You can reach John at 704 825-3737 x 254 or anderson.john@gaston.edu  The web site is http://textilecenter.gaston.edu 

Teaching methods are constantly evolving, but one method that has been around for a long time is flash cards.  Have you ever thought about using flash cards to help your production employees learn their job or perhaps a new process?  With the advent of the computer, flash cards have had a transformation.  There are several web sites dedicated to flash cards.  I am highlighting only one, Quizlet.  The site already has card sets about every subject studied in school.  But it also gives you the ability to make new sets of cards on any subject.  There are no sets already made about nonwovens, so why don't you be the first to make a set?  You can use the site for free, but to upgrade only costs $10 a year and then you can import your own pictures.  I think a great starting point would be to make a card set showing the machines in your plant.  The names of the machines is one of the first things a new employee needs to know.  Once you make a card set, the site can present it as normal flash cards, as a game, or as a test.  Check this out and imagine how you could use this for training.

Recently I have been working at a plant evaluating the operation of a fiber system.  This inspired the term for the week.  For those of us who have been in nonwovens for a while it may seen like this term needs little definition, but for someone coming off the street and new to nonwovens it needs defined.

                        This week's definition

Click on picture to go to the Truetzschler site.