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Getting out
of a sticky
situation
Metal seems like the natural choice for snowplow moldboards — but it rusts, it's heavy and, worst of all, snow sticks to it. When Western Products approached us, we knew we had the solution.
A plastic snowplow? It sounds like wishful thinking — lightweight, rust-free, and snow won't stick — but surely it couldn't stand up to the impacts, pressures and temperature extremes. The challenge we faced wasn't what you'd expect.
Durability was never in doubt
Years before Western approached us, during development of our Calf-Tel product line, we put a prototype into a freezer, took it down to −40°F, and dropped a 55-gallon oil drum on it from 50 feet in the air. The unit was crushed instantly — but it didn't crack, and within 48 hours it had reformed itself to its original shape. So durability wasn't going to be a problem.
The real challenge
The real challenge came in achieving a consistent, uniform material thickness across the entire surface of the moldboard. The solution was to eliminate the vacuum from the process and simply drape the heated sheet over a form. There was a little more to it than that — but at the end of the day, we met our customer's unique needs through innovative, outside-the-box thinking.
Two ways to start
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