It was an extra-special celebration at our holiday luncheon this year.  The food was pretty good,  the speeches were encouraging, but the annual employee anniversary awards were downright awe-inspiring.   15 and even 20 years of service seems relatively common in the manufacturing world, but 30 and 45? That is true dedication. Davies Molding has been molding custom plastic parts for over 80 years, and we attribute a large part of our success to the dedication of employees like Barb Hanson, who celebrated her 45 year anniversary, and Carol Cimino, who celebrated her 30 year anniversary.   Here is a list of all of the employees that celebrated their anniversaries - Congratulations!

We recently received an email from a history buff inquiring about the brand name Daka-ware and how it's related to Bake-lite, another name brand in the plastic molding industry.  In his email, the history buff explained that "Daka-ware is a common search on search engines but there's no real official answer". So we created this blog post to help fill in some of the gaps of this topic and provide a (hopefully) helpful "official" answer.  

Our 4570 Soft Touch Handle is showing up more in more in new industrial applications.  Here are the top 3 trends in industrial pull handles that's driving the success:

Having the right color part is very important for many applications that require knobs, either because it is functional, industry or product specific, or for appearance. The standard color for phenolic material is black. Other colors are available, but usually cost more. Red is the second most popular phenolic knob color, typically used for ball or lever knobs.  

There are a variety of plastic knobs that are particularly suited for manual valve controls.  “T” or Bar knobs are the most popular plastic knobs used for manual valve control applications. Here are examples of different shapes of bar knobs available.  

Davies Molding specializes in loading inserts (threaded fasteners) directly into components as plastic solidifies around the mounting. This process maximizes torque strength for demanding requirements. We stock thousands of inserts to minimize lead times, including both screw-machined parts and cold-headed studs. For food service equipment manufacturers, we stock stainless steel inserts that are FDA approved.  Here is a list of the 6 most popular inserts:

We have a long history of manufacturing plastic knobs, especially phenolic plastic knobs.  But we also mold phenolic custom plastic parts, such as the plastic butterfly valve for the oil & gas industry. We started manufacturing butterfly valves a few years ago because the company that needed them got fed up with their overseas vendor. 

In 1933, the Harry Davies Molding Company began with only seven molding presses and three punch presses, located in downtown Chicago. This 1960's picture, in front of the molding facility at 1428 N. Wells St., lists the phenolic material molded at that time: Bakelite, Beetle, Durez, Durite, Makalot, Plaskon, and Resinox. The Harry Davies Company also molded the popular Daka-ware brand of ashtrays and cookware knobs and handles.