Description
Design and optimize polymer materials, tooling, and processes for manufacturing plastic products via injection molding, extrusion, blow molding, and thermoforming, applying polymer science, chemistry, and engineering to meet performance, cost, quality, safety, and sustainability goals.
- • Develop safety procedures for operating polymer processing equipment and handling resins, additives, and emissions.
- • Determine optimal sequence and parameters for drying, compounding, extrusion, molding, and finishing operations.
- • Prepare cost estimates, cycle-time analyses, and production progress reports for plastic parts and processes.
- • Direct technicians and operators installing, operating, and improving extruders, molding cells, tooling, and auxiliary equipment.
- • Conduct lab and pilot trials on polymer formulations and processing to validate designs and scale to production.
- • Develop compounding and reactive extrusion processes to achieve target mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties.
- • Research and develop new polymers, additives, and processing methods to improve performance and sustainability.
- • Design process controls, sensors, and monitoring strategies for molding and extrusion lines based on lab and pilot data.
- • Design and plan layouts for molding, extrusion, and compounding equipment, tooling, and material handling systems.
- • Troubleshoot processing defects such as warpage, sink, voids, splay, burn marks, and dimensional variation.
- • Evaluate equipment and processes to optimize throughput, quality, energy use, and regulatory compliance.
- • Perform material and process testing (e.g., rheology, DSC, tensile, impact) and monitor melt temperature, moisture, pressure, and shear.
- • Monitor and analyze process and quality data; apply DOE, SPC, and mold flow simulation to establish robust process windows.
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Advanced Manufacturing
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O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
