For the past 15 years, I have been writing about the ‘secrets’ that surround the many substrates found in film industries. Mostly, I can highlight and explain them because of my base of experience and knowledge in film manufacturing and application. How did I come to this knowledge base? And can you develop the same knowledge base? I have always thought that my primary job, when working for a consulting customer, is to make or train my replacement so I’m no longer needed. So, I generally teach the science of what I’m helping my customer with. The point of this short article is along the lines of how I can be replaced by teaching you how I learned what I know.
Start with research
For many years, I have told my coworkers and my grandchildren that, aside from my inventions and my Thesis, everything I know I learned from books. Inventions, by their very nature, are the new findings beyond the edges of known technologies. You have to know what is known to be able to advance into new technology areas. Past is prologue.
In my experience, many of those things that I ‘discovered’ by experiments, I could have found in other publications. The biggest mistake, or technical sin, an engineer or scientist can make is to spend resources on discovering what already is known. So, at the beginning of every project I undertake, I try to spend the beginning efforts in the library, or now online, searching the topic to discover what already is known. I think it is harder now, with the decline in physical searching in libraries, to discover the foundations of existing knowledge about most subjects. Online searches seem to be constrained in depth by the available search engines I have easy access to. Oftentimes, I find it best to go to a nearby college library where I can have access to the better searching capabilities and the publications available within the library. You also should have a firm base in the science, engineering and technology of film making and polymers. No shortcut here.
“But if you proceed with a desire to understand what is written, once you have established and continue to expand your knowledge base, there are very few ‘secrets’ left.”
Foundational reading
But it is relatively easy to get this foundation by reading textbooks on films, extrusion, heat transfer and polymer science. And there are many such books and texts available. Another excellent source of information is in issued patents and patent applications. The essence of a patent is supposed to be a teaching tool. By explaining the prior art, it highlights the advancement of the new invention and can serve as a good introduction of a new-to-you technology. Coupled with your own understanding of engineering, chemistry, polymers and physics, the ‘secrets’ or mysteries of a technology become known.
I remember the first chemistry journal article I read as I started work as a synthetic chemist. It was hard to read – not lively prose but simple statements and background, with an assumed knowledge base of the reader. After finishing the introduction, the next paragraph required that I read a book on stereochemistry to understand, which I did. The next paragraph needed a book on magnesium reagents to understand what was being said. Seemed daunting. But if you proceed with a desire to understand what is written, once you have established and continue to expand your knowledge base, there are very few ‘secrets’ left. First, establish for yourself a bibliography (i.e., a reading list) and perhaps a library of textbooks, technical papers and patents, and then get started.
Most of the titles in my library are older and mixed with newer titles. But the older ones represent the early texts on the industries I have been involved in (i.e., in extrusion and oriented film technologies) where I perhaps represent the second or third generation of engineers and scientists working. So, while Sweeting’s The Science and Technology of Polymer Films, Vol. I & II might be hard to find, it is easier to find Kanai/Cambbell’s Film Processing. McKelvey’s Polymer Processing and Middleman’s Fundamentals of Polymer Processing have newer (better?) replacements. In extrusion, try and find Bernhardt’s Processing of Thermoplastic Materials or Chung’s Extrusion of Polymers or perhaps Rauwendall’s Polymer Extrusion.
Establish peer networks
You also should join and participate in technical societies and attend technical conferences to meet your peers. I always have been fortunate in my associations, mostly made at conferences as a member of technical organizations, such as The Society of Plastics Engineers and AIMCAL (now Association for Roll-to Roll Converters). They also can be the base off which you move for career changes, or career emergencies! Do it for yourself.
While it is easier to read the explanations of others about the imbedded technologies (‘secrets’) of films, it is far better if you begin today to establish your own base of understanding. One of my friends, and a coworker, used to whine that it was so hard to do the learning, that there were so many books to read. My advice was to read a page a day. That would be a book a year and, after a few years, a few books – and then a better understanding. So, get started today.
Eldridge M. Mount, Ph.D.
Consulting Technical Editor
585-223-3996, emmount@msn.com
ARC Member