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Over 25 years ago, Mike Clark owner of Mannetron stood in the casting and molding production area of his factory wondering how he was going to produce an enormous order of mannequins for one of his clients.

He stood there looking at the two-part molds that were needed for each arm, leg, head and torso of all of the different styles of mannequins they were to produce. How was his crew going to hand lay up all of those individual halves, then seam them flawlessly in the small amount of time they had to complete the project? Not to mention doing that over and over, hundreds of times.

Then it came to him! A brilliant thought as he watched one of his casters turning a small reproduction piece in every direction by hand. Why can’t that rotational process be done with large pieces? So, Mike began to develop the rotational method of casting.

While he had the closed molds being made, he designed and developed the first Rotational casting machine. Based on his research, the forks had to rotate at specific speeds in order for the molding material to fully cover the inside of his molds. Otherwise, the material would spin at the incorrect speed causing it to “gather” and not evenly cover.

He also realized, you can’t just pour the usual casting material into the molds. It has to be at a particular viscosity in order to flow and coat. Too thick and you get “puddles” and loss of coverage elsewhere in the mold. Too thin and you get “egg shell” coverage. Both are damaging to molds and slow production to a crawl.

Once all research was done and the first machine built, it was time to use it as a production machine. The crew was given the full body, closed molds of the mannequins which were secured to the machine’s forks. The newly formulated casting material was poured into the mold and the machine went to work.

A few minutes later, a near seamless, perfect mannequin body was pulled from the mold in half the time it took to hand cast it. Mike knew he had just handled his production problem.

The Mannetron casting machine proved to be a truly revolutionary invention as it cut the number of molds needed by 80% and increased production by 200%. All of these advances saved big on man hours, cost of materials and turn around time of molds. This also cut the amount of production space by 75%

As word got out, Mike was approached by a resin and urethane company that said they had many customers that would benefit from this process and that Mannetron should sell the machines.

So, Mike began selling them to manufacturers all over the country and abroad. But a company new to casting this way has many questions and uncertainties of how to transition from hand lay-up or chopper gun casting to rotational molding. Mike understood this and with each machine sold, a full training manual and technical representative was offered.

Twenty five years later, Mannetron has sold hundreds of machines worldwide. Since that first mannequin production order, Mannetron has produced animals, simulated glass products, lamps, urns, rocks and prototype castings with many different types of materials . We continually research new materials, new mold making procedures and new applications. This is what makes Mannetron’s rotational casting machines and production facility ideal for other companies.

Mannetron’s history and years of experience in the rotational casting world is why we truly are the pioneers of the rotational casting technology.