Who is Hallmark?
Hallmark is a popular greeting card manufacturer with factory operations based in Kansas (In Leavenworth and Lawrence). They create cards for all occasions, so in turn they target all demographics of consumer. They produce 3-5 million cards and envelopes a week from this one factory! The company was started in 1910 by Joyce Hall in Nebraska.
In terms of materials, they work in inks and papers, but they also use flitter (glitter), different types of foils, flock (feels like bumblebee fur, definitely IS NOT, and shouldn't be inhaled), Virko (thermographic powdered nylon printed in plastic), and iridescence. The dyes they use are Magnesium dyes or Brass dyes. Magnesium dyes are less expensive than brass, and don't last as long, so they are only used on orders of less than 25,000. All of their materials are outsourced and brought in, but their paper comes from sustainable forests, and they recycle as much of their materials and scraps as possible. The cards are even printed at another place and then brought in, because this factory specializes in the "effects" for the paper. They use a die cutting method to cut all of their cards, with specialized, custom die cutting sheets. Their finishes range from foil, embossing, silk screening, and repoussé, just to name a few, and they are added to the cards with pressure and ultra-thin adhesive. They can also add multiple effects to the same cards in various orders.
Honestly, I love greeting cards, I am in the habit of keeping every card I receive, and I think the industry is still very much alive. My grandfather worked at a Hallmark factory when he came over to America with my grandmother and their sons, and it was wonderful today to get to see the inner-workings of a place where he spent so much of his time. He worked their for 45 years as an engineer. Unlike the cups created by Berry plastics, I can see the social value of something like a greeting card. I know that might sound a little janky to some, but hear this--to give a greeting card to someone is an act of care, to throw away a cup after 5 minutes of use 2-5 times a week per person in the entire United States is careless.
-Randa
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Berry Plastics Field Trip
Who is Berry Plastics? They are a plastic company that focuses primarily on food-ware, usually cups. They work for large and small restaurants producing these highly-disposable products in today's society. Berry Plastics has 75 plants worldwide, and is the largest consumer of polyethylene in North America, if not the world.
The have 3 methods of production; injection molding, thermoplastic, and dry printing. To form their plastic (which is outsourced or recycled from the waste of a previous product), in thermoplastics they have a lid line, which is a sheet of plastic that gets heated and molded simultaneously several times into lid-sheets. They add details each time it's molded. There was 65 million pounds of material in the thermoform sector consumed just this year. With injection molding, they melt plastic pellets and push them into molds under high amounts of pressure. They have a "Hot Runner" system which heats up the plastic to 500 degrees fahrenheit. At the end of each line of products, there is a precision cutter that cuts on a preset path. In the printing section, they use inks that cure instantly under UV lights, and they cure 100-500 cups a minute on just one machine. They use the PMS color system, with color heads on each machine to hold ink.
1.5-2 million cups are produced per line a day, with 10 million cups being sent out of the factory as a whole per day. Thats a massive amount of production for a massive amount of consumption... This entire operation (especially the numerical figures) are major causes of concern for me about our consumer culture. To live in a world where this is socially acceptable, or even socially celebrated is sickening. Where does all that waste go? People don't think about those types of things here in America. However, our waste has devastating impacts on the other countries of the world, especially the poor ones.
-Randa
The have 3 methods of production; injection molding, thermoplastic, and dry printing. To form their plastic (which is outsourced or recycled from the waste of a previous product), in thermoplastics they have a lid line, which is a sheet of plastic that gets heated and molded simultaneously several times into lid-sheets. They add details each time it's molded. There was 65 million pounds of material in the thermoform sector consumed just this year. With injection molding, they melt plastic pellets and push them into molds under high amounts of pressure. They have a "Hot Runner" system which heats up the plastic to 500 degrees fahrenheit. At the end of each line of products, there is a precision cutter that cuts on a preset path. In the printing section, they use inks that cure instantly under UV lights, and they cure 100-500 cups a minute on just one machine. They use the PMS color system, with color heads on each machine to hold ink.
1.5-2 million cups are produced per line a day, with 10 million cups being sent out of the factory as a whole per day. Thats a massive amount of production for a massive amount of consumption... This entire operation (especially the numerical figures) are major causes of concern for me about our consumer culture. To live in a world where this is socially acceptable, or even socially celebrated is sickening. Where does all that waste go? People don't think about those types of things here in America. However, our waste has devastating impacts on the other countries of the world, especially the poor ones.
-Randa
El Dorado Inc. Field Trip
El Dorado Inc. is a 17 year old design company in KC that started in 1997. They started out as a triple threat, being an art gallery, design studio, and fabricator in equal parts, but now they are primarily a design studio. Their love of system-based furniture lead them to the existing buildings in KC, and they started out renovating buildings in the crossroads. Their primary clients are small entrepreneurs, makers, artists, and start up businesses.
Their shop is pretty outdated in terms of equipment, holding a scroll saw, drill press and a couple other tools, but they outsource most of their production currently, and they are really a design firm, so it's not a big issue.
Their primary materials include tube steel as the main focus, with stainless steel and sheet metal as secondary materials.
I got quite a bit out of the business and working advice of our tour guide, he talked about the differences between working for yourself and working for someone else. Working for yourself, for the first 10 years after schooling, you're going to be living a "thrifty" life, and you'll have to sacrifice all of your time and effort for your work. That being said, you shouldn't try to start your own business if you're not in love with your work, because otherwise it won't be worth it.
Also, ALWAYS be on time.
-Randa
Their shop is pretty outdated in terms of equipment, holding a scroll saw, drill press and a couple other tools, but they outsource most of their production currently, and they are really a design firm, so it's not a big issue.
Their primary materials include tube steel as the main focus, with stainless steel and sheet metal as secondary materials.
I got quite a bit out of the business and working advice of our tour guide, he talked about the differences between working for yourself and working for someone else. Working for yourself, for the first 10 years after schooling, you're going to be living a "thrifty" life, and you'll have to sacrifice all of your time and effort for your work. That being said, you shouldn't try to start your own business if you're not in love with your work, because otherwise it won't be worth it.
Also, ALWAYS be on time.
-Randa
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