Don L. Peters
Phillips Petroleum
Inducted 2000
Don Peters (1926 – ) is an American engineer and a pioneer in extrusion blow molding. At his retirement, Peters was the Principal Engineer for Blow Molding at Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He began his career at Phillips working in the injection molding field using polyolefins. He then shifted his focus to blow molding and was instrumental in the development of the first blow-molded automotive fuel tanks and the technology of applying metal inserts to them.
Peters co-developed and patented the basic die-shaping technology to improve wall thickness distribution for blow-molded parts. He also developed technology for internal cooling of hollow blow-molded parts and utilized moving mold sections (i.e., slides) for molds used to make one-piece irregularly shaped blow-molded parts that would have been otherwise impossible to mold.
Peters is a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers and received the Blow Molding Division’s Outstanding Service Award in 1989 and their Lifetime Outstanding Achievement Award in 1990. He holds 36 patents, all assigned to Phillips Petroleum, and received the company’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
Areas of Expertise:
Plastics processing