Sonics In Newtown To Be Featured

On The History Channel’s ‘Modern Marvels’

Sonics & Materials, Inc, local manufacturers of plastics welding equipment, will be featured in an upcoming episode of the History Channel’s Modern Marvels TV show. A film crew from Actuality Productions spent a day at Sonics’ Newtown headquarters interviewing the founder of the company, Robert Soloff, who holds the original patent for the process of ultrasonic plastics welding, and filming various types of plastics welding operations.

Modern Marvels, which airs Wednesdays on the History Channel, celebrates “ingenuity, invention and imagination brought to life on a grand scale, and tells the fascinating stories of the doers, dreamers and sometime-schemers who created everyday items, technological breakthroughs and man-made wonders,” according to its website. Mr Soloff, the president and founder of Sonics, discovered the process of welding rigid plastics with ultrasonics in 1963 and was awarded the corresponding patent in 1965.

The air date is scheduled for May 9 at 10 pm. The History Channel is available locally on channel 54 (Charter Communications) and the episode will focus on welding, with segments to include underwater welding, explosive welding, robotic welding, and ultrasonic welding.

Unlike the more popular images often summoned to mind by the term “welding,” ultrasonic welding does not require a blow torch or a helmet. In fact, ultrasonic welding joins two plastic parts together through the use of (mostly) inaudible sound waves, electrical energy, and vibrations, and it is widely used today in the manufacture of many everyday items such as appliances, automobiles, toys, medical devices, and textiles.

The marvel of plastics welding in action will be shown at the company’s applications lab and machine shop, where ultrasonic welding equipment is developed and manufactured. Plans are for the episode to showcase a behind-the-scenes look at how the process of ultrasonic welding actually works, with real-world demonstrations and applications. Other plastics welding processes, such as spin welding and tube sealing, are also set to be featured.

Sonics & Materials, Inc was founded by Mr Soloff in 1969 and was located originally in Danbury, moving later to Newtown, where the company has been located on Church Hill Road since 1998. In addition to plastics assembly equipment, Sonics also manufactures ultrasonic liquid processors, and over the intervening 40-plus years, Mr Soloff, has accrued another 11 patents in groundbreaking technology for both these fields.

Sonics & Materials has since its inception been a world leader in the field of 40-, 20- and 15 kHz ultrasonic welding technology, large-part linear vibration welding systems, spin welding machines, and other plastics joining methods. The company, which is ISO 9001 certified, designs and builds a complete line of handheld, bench-top and semiautomated plastics assembly systems, and offers in-house application assistance, materials testing laboratory service, global sales and distribution network, on-site field service and the industry’s most advanced welding systems.

Automotive, industrial, medical, packaging, toy, appliance, consumer and synthetic textile manufacturers around the world use Sonics’ standard or customized equipment to weld the full spectrum of commodity and engineering polymers.