Plastics Engineers

Consider participating in an engineering internship while in college. An internship is usually part of a four-year degree program. It offers you a chance to apply what you have learned in the classroom to a work situation. It also allows you to build skills and make contacts with people in the field.

Plastics engineers need to have good mechanical aptitude in order to develop the plastics parts and the tooling necessary to develop these parts. You must have thorough knowledge of the properties of plastic and of the processes that occur. There are thousands of different materials that you may encounter in the course of your workday. You also must be imaginative and creative in order to be able to solve any problems that might arise from new applications or in the transition/transformation of a mechanical metal part to that of a plastic one. Strong communications skills and the ability to work well with others is also important in the plastics engineer field.