Plastics Process Technician Apprenticeship Program

ACT NOW to take advantage of this opportunity!

INVEST IN YOUR PEOPLE!
Apprenticeship Program for Plastic Process Technicians

BENEFITS

  • Funding available for nearly
 two-thirds of the program cost.
  • Employees chosen for training feel valued, building loyalty to your company.
  • Develops the next generation of leaders within your company.
  • Apprentices can earn PA-
State registered, industry-specific certifications and are eligible to earn credits towards 
an associates degree of Applied Science in Industrial Technology at Clarion University.
  • Apprenticeships narrow
 the skills gap and help
 retain institutional knowledge 
in preparation for a retiring workforce.

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

SIGN UP FOR THIS PROGRAM:

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Lance J Hummer
Executive Director
Keystone Community Education Council
814.677.4427
[email protected]

CURRICULUM

Course Training Hours and On-the-Job Hours

Courses Covered
(Click on each course title for description)

Training Hours

On-the-Job Hours

OSHA 30 & Team Building 40 hrs. 500 hrs.
Plastic Materials 32 hrs. 500 hrs.
Core Math and Mold Design 48 hrs. 500 hrs.
Maintenance, AC/DC Fundamentals & Fluid Power 40 hrs. 500 hrs.
Molding 1, Process Start-up & Replication 40 hrs. 500 hrs.
Quality Systems, Measurement & Management 40 hrs. 500 hrs.
Molding Math 12 hrs.
Molding 2, Process Development & Documentation 89 hrs. 500 hrs.
Additional Required On-the-Job Training 0 hrs.


500 hrs.


Total in-class training hours 341 in-class hrs.
4,000 on-the-job hrs.

Be the first to know! Sign up for our email list.

OSHA 30 & Teambuilding (5 Days)

OSHA 30 teaches what employees need to know to build a culture of safety and reduce job-site accidents. Students receive a comprehensive overview of the policies, procedures, and best practices to help ensure a safe work environment. All students will be eligible for OSHA 30 Certification. Primary Topics of this course include, but are not limited to:

  • Introduction to OSHA
  • Managing safety and health
  • Fall protection
  • Exit routes & emergency action plans
  • Fire protection & prevention plans
  • Electrical issues
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Materials handling
  • Hazardous materials
  • Lockout/tagout
  • Machine guarding
  • Introduction to industrial hygiene
  • Bloodborne pathogens
  • Powered industrial vehicles

Teambuilding uses the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in this interactive workshop. The MBTI Assessment was developed to make the theory of psychological type understandable and useful in people’s lives. Knowledge of a person’s type can help them better understand the culture of the place they work, develop new skills, understand their participation in teams, and cope with change in the workplace. When someone understands their personality type preferences, they can approach their work in a manner that best suits their style, including:

  • How you manage their time
  • Problem solving
  • Best approaches for decision making
  • Dealing with stress

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Plastic Materials (2.5 days + online reviews + exam)

The Plastic Materials course is designed to give students a solid foundation for understanding polymer families, their corresponding material properties, plastic rheology, and shrink and warp characteristics. The course begins with a discussion on creating polymers from monomers, followed by the importance of molecular weight to your part’s performance and processing characteristics. The course then dives into material drying requirements and measurement, additives, viscosity, and rheology (study of plastic flow). Students will learn what makes some polymers amorphous and others semi-crystalline, and how those classifications affect material properties, processing, mold design, and part design. Finally, the course will teach students to understand and recognize volumetric vs. orientation-induced shrinkage, and how each causes plastic parts to warp. They will then learn strategies for reducing warp by evaluating options in material selection, mold design, processing, and part design.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Polymerization methods
  • Temperature properties such as Tg and Tm
  • Amorphous versus semi-crystalline materials
  • Molecular weight
  • Drying plastics & measuring moisture content
  • Crystallinity and its effect on material properties
  • Plastic flow characteristics
  • Viscosity
  • Shrink and warp

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Core Math and Mold Design (2.5 days + online reviews + exam)

The Mold Design course is designed to help students gain a working knowledge of mold design and manufacturing processes. The course starts off by identifying the five key systems of a mold: melt delivery, cooling, structural, venting, and ejection. We will discuss the foundations of each system and how they all affect the formation of the plastic part and the final part quality. Students will also learn how to evaluate a mold design based on the 5 systems and recognize design features that could be improved. They will also learn troubleshooting strategies and the right questions to ask during a mold review process. Students learn to identify common mold components, both on industry molds and on mold prints, through the lecture and labs, including two mold teardown and assembly lab sessions, a session on mold print reading, and a cooling cart demonstration.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Hands-on mold tear down and assembly lab
  • Reading mold prints
  • 2-Plate and 3-plate mold bases
  • In-mold pressure drop
  • Series versus parallel mold cooling designs
  • Strategies for optimizing mold cooling, such as turbulent flow
  • Baffles and bubblers
  • Structural considerations
  • Core/cavity alignment and pocketing techniques

Core Math (2 days)

The Core Math course is designed to build on student’s strengths while increasing their overall mathematical understanding and skill. This course will focus on several topics of study designed to the students’ mathematical understanding and skills.

Some topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Converting units of measure
  • Use of exponents
  • Area and volume calculations
  • Order or operations
  • Graphing
  • Percent calculations
  • Ejection strategies
  • Types of hot and cold runner systems
  • Gate design and location strategies
  • Venting details and strategies

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Maintenance, AC/DC Fundamentals & Fluid Power (5 days)

The AC/DC Fundamentals course covers the fundamentals of AC/DC theory and laboratory practice (if possible) by applying electrical theories to circuits and instrumentation. Theory will be related to reading technical schematic drawings and application to machines, assemblies and electrical applications.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Orientation/safety
  • Ohm’s Law
  • Resistors
  • Series and parallel circuits
  • AC and DC circuits
  • Kirchoff’s Law
  • Thevenin’s and Norton’s Theorems
  • Inductance
  • Capacitors
  • Transformers
  • Filters
  • Power factor correction

The Fluid Power course applies the principles and applications of hydraulics and pneumatics as they apply to power and control of industrial equipment.

Topic include, but are not limited to:

  • Safety
  • Hydraulic and pneumatic principles
  • Basic pneumatic circuits
  • Hydraulic/pneumatic power systems
  • Principles of pressure and flow
  • Hydraulic/pneumatic speed control
  • Hydraulic/pneumatic DCV applications
  • Pressure control circuits

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Molding 1, Process Start-up & Replication

(4 days + online reviews + ½ day machine review + ½ day of written exam and on the machine skills assessment)

The Molding 1 course focuses on safe, efficient, and proper starting up of a machine and mold using an existing documented process. This course utilizes a 50% split of machine time versus classroom time. This is an introductory course on injection molding while covering fundamental shop floor and machine safety topics. Students will learn about different types of machine designs and controls, including hydraulic and electric injection molding machines, and both toggle and hydraulic clamping systems. The course will also expose students to thermolators, grinders, dryers, and other auxiliary equipment. Students will learn how to interpret material data sheets and typical process documentation sheets. The course also teaches methods for correctly restarting a molding process and recognizing common molding issues including short shorts, flash, and moisture problems. Students will utilize AIM’s Mold Start-up Checklist as the foundation for the processing sections of this course.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Safety
  • Molding machine introduction
  • Molding process overview
  • Review of plastic materials & mold design
  • Process startup & verification strategies
  • Machine preparation
  • Material preparation
  • Mold preparation
  • Process troubleshooting
  • Process documentation

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Quality Systems, Measurement & Management (5 days)

The Quality Systems course covers principles of quality measurement and management. Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Basic of blueprint reading
  • Use of various measurement instrumentation for part inspection
  • Professional communications
  • Development of managerial skills
  • Critical thinking
  • Problem solving
  • Leadership
  • Listening and communication
  • Conflict resolution
  • Motivation

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Molding Math (1 day + exam)

The Molding Math course is designed to build on student’s previous Core Math course with a dedicated focus on the relevance of math to various applications specific to injection molding processing.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Intensification ratio
  • Shot size volume
  • Screw area
  • Dryer capacity
  • Material utilization
  • Converting machine units from linear to volumetric
  • Molding graphs (machine curves, cavity pressure curves, flow rate curves)

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.

Molding 2, Process Development & Documentation

(8 days + online reviews + 2 days of written exams and on the machine skills assessments)

The Molding 2 course builds on the skills and machine familiarity learned in Molding 1 while focusing on strategies used for developing, documenting, and defending a scientific molding process. The course utilizes a 50% split of machine time versus classroom time. Students will learn on three different molding machines while understanding the different controllers and the information needed to get the molding machine functional with all variables zeroed out prior to each lab. The course goes deeper into each subject matter as compared to Molding 1, including plastic materials and mold design strategies that directly affect the performance of the mold and the resulting process window. This course focuses on separating out plastic variables (plastic flow rate, pressure gradient, cooling rate and time, and melt temperature) versus machine variables and the importance of each. Students will utilize AIM’s Process Development Strategies and Workbook as the foundation for the processing sections of this course.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Molding machine setup
  • Machine specifications
  • Drying and moisture testing
  • Process development methods for fill time, pack time, and pack pressure
  • Troubleshooting
  • Introduction to Flow Grouping
  • Material preparation
  • Plastic temperature
  • Plastic flow rate
  • Plastic pressure gradient
  • Plastic cooling rate and time
  • Pressure loss study
  • Plastic part design
  • Introduction to machine and cavity pressure curves

Training Location:
AIM Institute
6100 West Ridge Road Erie, PA
https://aim.institute/
*course location subject to change

If you are interested in participating in this apprenticeship program, please contact Lance Hummer, Executive Director at the Keystone Community Education Council, by emailing [email protected] or calling 814.677.4427.