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He Wrote the Book on Feeding Technology |
July 30, 2007 |
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Posted by Don Dunnington at July 30, 2007 01:43 PM |
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This week starts the first week of Dave Wilson's retirement, but his body of work and the contributions he made to develop our knowledge and skills will continue to influence those of us who work in the process industries for many years to come. Dave is widely known as the author of Feeding Technology for Plastics Processing (Hanser Publishing, Munich. 344 pages). He is equally well known to thousands of process and control engineers, operators and maintenance people who have attended one of his seminars or enrolled in one of his classes at the K-Tron Institute, where he was the founder and guiding force for 20 years.
Dave Wilson brought us a wider understanding of the central role feeders, especially weigh feeders play in many processes, whether its food, plastics, pharmaceuticals, or chemicals. Through his teaching and his writing he also bought a greater appreciation of the knowledge and skills that users should develop to gain the maximum benefit from their feeding equipment.
Gravimetric feeders are in a unique position in many processes: they may account for 15 percent or less of the capital cost of a process line, but their performance will have a profound influence on the productivity of the entire line and the quality of the end product. Dave not only recognized this central truth; he believed that it was incumbent on K-Tron, as a leading manufacturer of loss-in-weight and weighbelt feeders, to transfer the technical knowledge needed to use and maintain weigh feeders and feeder controls. His mission was to develop knowledgeable feeder users who would assure the feeders on their process lines continually performed at their optimum level.
But Dave didn't stop at spreading feeder know-how. He was an engineer and inventor at heart. Before becoming a teacher of feeding technology he had been the leader of K-Tron's feeder R&D, and he constantly offered up ideas for feeder or controls improvements. He even developed feeder maintenance tools to make it easier for customers and K-Tron service engineers to maintain their feeding equipment.
Dave also strove to raise the level of process industry knowledge and professionalism among K-Tron employees and sales representatives. He created an "Introduction to Feeding Technology" course for employees that I first attended more than 18 years ago. I still have my manual and notes from that course and continue to refer to them when I need an answer to a technical question.
Though industrial equipment and feeders were completely new to me at the time, Dave's course gave me a jump start in climbing what otherwise could have been a very steep learning curve. When I found there was a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about feeders among the trade press, Dave gladly put together a special version of his "Introduction to Feeding Technology" for editors. We staged several day long seminars for editors here in Pitman, New Jersey, and Dave became a trusted resource to them.
Beyond the depth of knowledge, the intellect, and the technical skills he brought to the job, it was his constant good humor and blunt honesty that made Dave Wilson such a good teacher to a large and diverse group of people. Dave had fun teaching and he made learning fun for his listeners. Nor was he afraid to be critical when he thought a piece of equipment didn't perform as well as it could.
There were 50 fellow workers at Dave's farewell luncheon last Thursday. That was a nice turnout and included many of us who had worked with Dave over the years, but it doesn't begin to measure the countless numbers who have been helped and influenced by Dave. If you are among those who were fortunate enough to be one of Dave Wilson's students, readers or associates, please take a moment right now to add a comment here.
Don Dunnington
Moderator
Comments
Thanks for the update about Dave; please give him my VERY BEST. I have such fond memories of our early editorial dealings, during my early years at Chemical Engineering, and the visit I made to K-Tron for your seminar (I think I told you that I actually bought 100 shares of K-Tron stock after that visit, so impressed was I by what I learned!).
All those early dealings gave me a great introduction, and then a solid foundation into the whys and wherefores of powder and bulk solids handling -- knowledge that came in handy countless times during my long tenure at Chemical Engineering and beyond.
Suzanne Shelley
MODERATOR NOTE - Suzanne Shelley is a freelance writer. She was an editor at Chemical Engineering magazine for more than 16 years and was Managing Editor for her last 5 years there. She remains a Contributing Editor at CE and is also a Contributing Editor to Chemical Engineering Progress (the AIChE magazine), Turbomachinery International (which serves the electric power industry), and Pharmaceutical Commerce. She also writes for a numer of companies and trade groups.
Posted by: Suzanne Shelley at August 8, 2007 09:01 AM
