Originally Published MPMN November 2004

E-News

My Favorite Bookmarks

Matt Horton, CEO
Stork Twin City Testing The Polymer Science Macrogalleria, University of Southern Mississippi (www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/index.htm) explains polymers in understandable terms. If you don’t understand polymers before you work your way through this five-level on-line curriculum, then you will afterward. Designed for students, it’s a great organic chemistry refresher for anyone, and you can start browsing at any level.

The Finishing Industry (www.finishing.com) offers a useful Web site that started as a metal finishing BBS in 1989. The main feature I use is an interactive forum for technical questions—one for input from all users, another for commercial advice from businesses. The topics are infinite; I’ve found information I needed on subjects ranging from corrosion to plating to embrittlement.

The Nickel Institute (www.nidi.org) is an offshoot of the Nickel Development Institute. Not only will the site tell you everything you ever wanted to know about nickel and nickel alloys, but it also has an extremely generous policy for printed and downloadable publications, with more than 375 papers available at no charge. This site is an invaluable resource for engineers who work in metal.

Our materials scientists frequently consult a Web site called MatWeb (www.matweb.com). It has a huge library of material data sheets containing property information and a search engine that lets you search by composition, material type, trade name, manufacturer, and metric and U.S. properties. We sometimes use it to quickly confirm data or to review an unfamiliar material.

We do quite a few trade shows over the year. Skyline Graphics (www.skyline-exhibits.com) supplies and maintains our booth equipment, and its site is a great source of trade show tips, calculators, logistics, and lead management ideas in downloadable PDFs. Like the Nickel Institute, it will mail out printed booklets free of charge, and it also has a free newsletter that our marketing staff find very useful.

Stork Twin City Testing (St. Paul, MN; www.storksmt.com/tct) is part of the Stork Materials Technology group, a network of 21 independent labs across North America and Europe. Stork TCT provides the medical device industry with product, materials, metallurgical, nondestructive, and construction testing, inspection, and engineering.

Corinne Litchfield

Copyright ©2004 Medical Product Manufacturing News