John Carroll explores silicone's history in keynote presentation

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio—What's past is prologue for John Carroll, who has spent more than five decades in the silicone rubber industry.

He may not have witnessed the onset of the material in 1943, when silicone replaced the leather wrapping on the aft searchlights of U.S. Navy destroyers patrolling the North Atlantic, shielding the hot lights from the freezing rain and salty spray.

But there is not much he has not seen—from silicone's use in sparkplug boots and aerospace seals to its niche applications in the medical and oil and gas industries.

He imparted some of that industry history during his May 11 closing keynote address at the International Silicone Conference, organized by Rubber News.

"I learned the most in the 1970s, when everything was hands-on," he told a packed audience in a ballroom of the Sheraton Suites in Cuyahoga Falls, located just outside of Akron. "And it happened quickly. It was fun to be involved—one day it was auto, the next day aerospace, the next day medical."

The "Godfather of Silicone" has worked for GE Silicones, J-Sil (now under Dow), Dow Corning Corp., Dow Corning STI and R.D. Abbott Co. Inc. in positions ranging from lab and quality technician to executive manager, sales representative and vice president of sales and marketing.

He remains a senior account manager for R.D. Abbott, based in Garden Grove, Calif., and his sales territory includes the eastern U.S. and central Canadian regions.

The 1960s was a crucial decade for development of the material, Carroll said, though "prior to that, there was not a lot going on developmentally."

Appliance manufacturers came calling for silicone seals and gaskets in the 1960s, and the silicone wire jacket already had been established.

Silicone use in the medical field when Carroll was hired by GE in the fall of 1970 was in its nascence, though the material had found a solid presence in automotive ignition cables (where graphite was impregnated into a weave of fiberglass) and spark plug boots, applications that had been ongoing for some time.

"I did meet Dick Compton (at the time), who started NuSil—NuSil was one of the medical leaders along with Dow Medical," Carroll said.

To this day, the sales volume of silicone to the U.S. Navy for water-tight seals for shipping cables "remains about the same," Carroll said.

Soon Dow unveiled its concept of "shake and bake"—where fabricators were the finishing touch.

"This was a big idea that did not work," Carroll said.

Carroll said General Electric came out with Blensil line (heat-curable silicone rubber compositions) during this time as well, with no post-cure necessary.

In the 1970s, Dow and GE began compounding in Connecticut and at other satellite operations.

This was really the onset of custom compounding, he said, a time when mixing began to blossom across the industry.

Sales doubled for Carroll's companies during the halcyon period of the 1970s—and price increases during this decade "were miniscule compared to what we are seeing today," Carroll said.

"But there is not anyone in this room who does not know that," he said.

Carroll offered a bit of social commentary on the gender roles of the time, as well.

"All sales people were males," he said. "We didn't see a sales woman until the late 1970s."

As for dress in this earlier eras, sales people wore hats and fedoras. Everyone worked out of sales offices with a secretary, and there were no cell phones, no computers.

"We found warm phone booths a lot in those days," Carroll said.

Fax machines and phone cards existed, and "a fax still beat the mail," he said.

"The 1980s were definitely the decade of the most change," Carroll said.

Detroit took a stern grip on the industry as the bulk of demand turned to automotive, which consumed between 35 and 40 percent of all silicone-related sales.

Enter the Weather Pack, a new application for which Carroll received qualification on a mass scale—and a prestigious award from GE's plastics division (silicone was under plastics at the time) for his efforts.

"We needed an elastomer that stayed true to itself, with toughness and lasting ability," he previously told Rubber News. "Certain areas (of the engine compartment) had to be unbuckled without destroying the case, and we had to keep moisture out in an oily environment. There are literally hundreds of connections under the hood. Silicone had to be the answer."

It turned out to be the biggest application up to that point ever for silicone rubber, and it was unique in its design, since it had to be pristine when the casting tool opened, ready for use immediately.

And it was intuitive in its design, using a fenyl oil that floated inside, which came to the surface to allow the parts to be assembled and disassembled thousands of times.

Other components such as muffler hangars, airbags and "lots and lots of other parts" were made possible by silicone applications.

Custom mixing exploded in the 1980s, Carroll said.

" 'Shake and bake' did not fill the needs for fabricators," Carroll said. "Fabricators viewed their roles as part makers, not mixers.

"Large batches of compounds further expanded role of the custom mixers."

The company for whom Carroll worked at the time, J-Sil, a company that later was purchased by Dow in 1986 to set up Dow Corning STI, experienced "fast growth with large batches," Carroll said.

"When you become a big player, someone is going to come after you," he said. "And Dow came calling, asking about J-Sil."

Sponsored mixing training at "the majors" came to a halt.

"Fabricators' needs trump the majors' plans of commoditization," Carroll said.

Carroll called the 1990s "the decade that everything came together" at all levels of the industry.

North America truly became united, as fabricators from Canada and Mexico got in the game, and Dow, Wacker and GE served them like any other U.S. fabricator.

"It became one large market, and we had to deal with it as such," Carroll said.

Automotive took a stronger grip on the industry, as muffler hangers became the largest silicone use, by volume, in the market.

And information itself witnessed its own consolidation, as computers found their way to sales office desks, and more sales offices closed with the elimination of staff and more salespeople working from home.

"The days of a sales person looking for a comfortable phone booth ends with the widespread use of cell phones," Carroll said. "I had one at Dow and it was a monster, wired straight to the car."

The advent of LSRs made a huge impact on the market during the 1990s, as it brought "an entirely new cadre of fabricators into the picture."

If consolidation was the name of the game in the 1990s, then "global" may have been the buzzword in the decade of the 2000s.

"Supply was coming from China, Japan and Korea," Carroll said. "We had to be more reactive, add service and try to offset the lower cost of materials that were being imported into the country."

Custom compounding continued on a global basis.

GE sold its silicone business to Apollo during this decade, establishing Momentive. Eventually, Momentive would sell its monomer business in Waterford, N.Y., and now produces the silicone building block overseas.

Kitchen applications also expanded during this time, with silicone finding usage in muffin pans, utensil handles and microwaves.

But when the Great Recession hit in 2007, the bottom fell out of automotive—still the keystone industry at that time for silicone, Carroll said.

"To our industry it was a catastrophe," he said. "Every capital expenditure was cut—and the timing could not have been worse. The result of that recession cost us a decade of growth."

Carroll describes the 2010s as "the lost decade," as custom mixers filled the void of disappearing products.

"The majors went from 50-pound minimums to 1,000-pound minimums," Carroll said. "They reinforced the need for custom mixing in the industry. Hardly any new products were developed during this 'lost decade.' "

Carrol said the early part of this decade has demonstrated a need to improvise and overcome, a need to "learn a new way to sell" once again.

In particular, he said, how does an industry forecast its future "when for two years no one has had a clue what is going on?" he asked.

As capacity disappears, hard choices are being made by downstream fabricators. And the material is reaching cost points where it is becoming too expensive for everyday consumer products.

"We can't get enough drums, boxes or raw materials, and it looks like this will take a long time to get out of," he said. "In my opinion, the supplier who gets production and shipping back to normal first is going to have a huge advantage.

"It's a race for the five majors to get this thing behind us and begin selling (silicone) at an equitable price once again," he said.

Like silicone, Carroll may be around for another 50 years given his singular influence in the industry.

He remains a go-to source in a market that is constantly innovating.

"Silicone's versatility is one of the reasons I am still around," he said. "It's not mundane, and there is something new all the time ... and that is what makes it fun."