People, Places & Things

Curbell Plastics, Inc. announced the hiring of Ben Rushing, who has returned to Curbell as the Regional Sales Manager for Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. Rushing first joined Curbell in 2007 as an Outside Sales Representative for the Denver location, providing support and expertise to packaging and conveying manufacturers, sign manufacturers specializing in channel letters, and aerospace firms. In 2011 he left to pursue another position. When the Curbell Plastics Regional Sales Manager role for the West became available, Rushing was warmly welcomed back to the Denver location.

Asahi/ America, Inc. announced the addition of Peter Quinn to its business development team as national business development manager for custom fabricated products. Quinn brings over 30 years of sales and distribution experience of pipe, valves and fittings.

Plastic tubing manufacturer NewAge Industries recently named two new members to its Board of Directors. CEO Ken Baker invited the new members, Jim Henderson and Andreas Georghiou, to help plan the years ahead for NewAge Industries, its employee owners, and its customers as the company expands. They join current board members Cecil Ursprung and Pat Sacco.

Precision Drive Systems (PDS) , a global provider of precision motor spindle support and repair has appointed Greg Needham as Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

In Memoriam
On June 11, 2020 Spencer Dick left the world a far more interesting place than he had found it on September 23, 1954. He made an indelible mark on the manufacturing and automation industries and the lives of makers across the globe with his brilliant inventions. Upon his death, he had accumulated over 100+ patents for ideas in various realms of manufacturing, automation, and lineal positioning processes.

He began the Oak Street Furniture Group, then Benchmark, a high-end custom cabinetry company. It struck him that few employees could read a tape measure very well. This resulted in an inability to quickly, accurately, and repeatably, cut wood for his kitchen cabinets, and an insurmountable loss of money, wasted labor hours, and mis-cut material that had to be scrapped.

He set out to solve this problem, and in his home garage in 1994 he invented the TigerStop, a machine for automated lineal processing that could be adapted to nearly any tool and position material accurately for cutting, drilling, and punching.

Spencer has always been adamantly clear about his mission to empower local manufacturers to be globally competitive. He had an unquenchable work ethic and will be honored each and every day by his wife, Mary, son, Nathaniel, and daughter, Elizabeth, all of whom will continue seeing through Spencer’s mission into the future.