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.
One of the first things Williams told me when he said that I would be working with these battery boxes is that the machine was going to keep spitting out the boxes whether I was ready for them or not.
While 40 seconds is a relatively long time and Kathy had no trouble keeping up at all, I found at first it was easy for me to get flustered and fall behind. While Kathy helped out and kept me up to speed, there were times where the machine had spit out two or three more battery boxes while I was still trying to get the trim off of the one at hand.
The more I tried to rush myself and stay on top of things, the more I started to get sloppy, and it's not a good thing to be sloppy when you're working with a very sharp box-cutter. While all my fingers remain intact and no blood was drawn during my shift, I did ruin three battery boxes by hacking away too much trim and leaving noticeable notches in the otherwise perfect plastic piece.
Kathy and Cole each assured me that all was well and that the only way to get the hang of it would be to keep going until I developed my own routine. Practice makes perfect.
While I wouldn't say that I was the Picasso of preparing plastic battery boxes, I did get faster as the hour wore on and I did so without ruining anymore boxes. After the first half-hour, I was able to keep up without Kathy pitching in (for the most part), and the hour went by really quickly since I was busy either preparing the boxes, or assembling the cartons, at all moments.
After experiencing what some of the CVT employees might on a daily basis, I have a lot of respect for what they do and how capable they are of knowing all the many different moving parts that make up the different kinds of production at CVT.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to come in and be a part of the CVT team, and I want to extend a gracious thank you to President Shawn Baker for being so inviting.

Photo by Cole Williams, Molding Manager