June 5, 2018

In the face of the growing shortage of marine industry workers, we were impressed with the education session hosted May 22 to 24 by Polynt-Reichhold and Composites One at the Polynt Composites Application Centre in North Kansas City.

On behalf of Boating Industry Canada / News Week, and to further my own interest in boat building, I registered for the sessions and flew to North Kansas City, MO for the three-day session. While we see this from the marine industry perspective, Polynt-Reichhold is really a massive company in the composites business internationally, and they have products and services for any company building with composites.

Attendees came from the RV business, truck body companies, water park slides and even people building portable toilets. Don’t laugh – that’s where the money is!

Generally, composites are expanding into road and bridge construction, apartment and condo balconies, sporting goods of many types and far more business areas. To support these many client groups, Polynt (which recently merged with Reichhold) has many connections with associated companies that supply products used with their resins and gel coat product lines.

John Sawayda presents a selection of gel coat guns and resin pots to interested attendees.

The sessions I attended included presentations by United Initiators, Magnum Venus Products, Chem-Trend, Vectorply, SWORL and others. The main presenters were John Sawayda and Kelly Potterf of Polynt-Reichhold with Sawayda giving a fast-paced overview of composites construction and Potterf covering the quality control aspects as the starting point to the three days of presentations, demonstrations and hands-on learning at the Polynt Composites Application Centre in Missouri.

Of the 60 or so people attending, probably 20 were industry experts and resource people ready to listen to our questions and provide answers and resources. I had the opportunity to see and experience gel coat spraying, chopper gun operation and MVP systems, learn about core materials, skin coat and bulking as well as advanced construction techniques like vacuum infusion, light RTM, silicone bagging and even making a silicone bag for closed molding operations.

Doug Smith of RTM North Technologies explains the use of wax sheet in mold-making for resin transfer molding processes.

The people at Polynt-Reichhold did a great job of covering a very wide range of material in a short time. The sessions were geared to FRP Processes for the Manager and would have been ideal for a boat company owner or manager to look at the big picture of production techniques to advance their business. It was also well-suited to those contemplating an entry into FRP production.

The group included a high percentage of bright young people who showed real enthusiasm for the learning opportunity. Incredibly, the sessions were free to attend and Polynt-Reichhold and Composites One even included several meals to foster discussions and build new relationships among the attendees.

John Sawayda sets up your faithful editor, Andy Adams with a gel coat gun and gives him an opportunity to spray up a demonstration mold at the Polynt Applications Centre.

All in all, it was a great value to me personally and a very worthwhile way for Polynt-Reichhold to support their many client groups. For more information Canadian customers can send an email to contact.CA@polynt.com. Keep your eye out for future opportunities at Polynt-Reichhold and in the meantime, check out the information on their website under the American Area link. It includes many instructional and information resources that you can access any time:http://www.polynt.com/en/ . Also of value is the website: www.compositesone.com.