SHERBURNE – As part of our 'Punching the Clock' series for Manufacturing Week, I spent about an hour and a half in the factory at Chenango Valley Technologies (CVT) to get a firsthand look at what their employees might experience on a day-to-day basis.
What I found was that there is a lot going on in CVT at any given time of the day, and their employees are well in-tune with all of it.
CVT, formerly Chenango Tool and Die, is a custom injection molding company located in Sherburne that was founded in 1972. CVT offers in-house part design, mold design, and molding to create various plastic pieces. Their customers range from people who operate from their kitchen table, to companies with thousands of employees, and everywhere in between.
I arrived at CVT for my brief stint as a part of their staff on Monday, October 3, at about 11 a.m. When I got there, CVT President Shawn Baker and Molding Manager Cole Williams were able to get me right to work.
My role in CVT production dealt with the creation of battery boxes: large, plastic, black boxes that will go on to be used for RV, boat, and golf-cart batteries.
With the help of the friendly and exceptionally patient employee Kathy Paul, I was operating machine #9: a Van Dorm 400 ton molding machine. When I say that I was operating this machine, I mean that I stood beside it and tried to keep up as it spit out battery box after battery box, warm from the press, every 40 seconds.
My job was to take these battery boxes, cut off the 'runner' (a plastic stem attached to the box that is a result of the machine's injection of melted plastic into the mold through a small hole), shave off any excess plastic trim called the 'flash' using a box cutter, and then to tape a pre-assembled strap in a plastic casing into the box, before moving onto the next one. Seems simple enough, right?
On a given shift, a CVT employee will prepare about 50-60 cartons of these battery boxes that are shipped to various companies throughout the country. Each carton contains a dozen battery boxes and their lids, assembled in a particular way so that everything will fit with little room to spare.
