George S. Nalle, Jr.
Nalle Plastics
Inducted 1997
George S. Nalle (1919 – 2003) was an American inventor and entrepreneur. His invention and commercial development of the process for the direct extrusion of nonwoven plastic netting has generated many unique end-use applications.
He earned a B.S. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin, was a member of the University of Texas Chancellor’s Council, and was a trustee of the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio. After serving as the U.S. Air Force representative on a team to study the use of plastics in Germany at the end of World War II, Nalle returned to the U.S. convinced of their potential and soon started a custom injection molding company in his hometown of Austin, TX. He subsequently became interested in other plastics processes, such as thermoforming, for which he developed semi-automatic equipment. Turning to extrusion, Nalle initiated a project to replace conventional mosquito netting with a plastic alternative.
The mosquito netting program was unsuccessful. However, the resulting process showed vast potential to produce bilayer nets without the knots required for woven metallic or synthetic fiber netting. The process used a pair of concentric counter-rotating dies at right angles to the extruder, with a quenching bath and specially designed takeoff equipment. Nalle developed this process for the direct extrusion of nonwoven plastic netting in the 1960s. Today, the technology has end uses as diverse as netting used to support reverse osmosis membranes in dialysis machines, semiconductor manufacturing, desalination equipment, geotextiles employed to aid in reforestation and retard soil erosion, and the onion bag we are all familiar with.
After a struggle to establish patent protection for the Naltex® product in the U.S. and abroad, Nalle licensed the process to companies in Europe and Japan, where even more applications surfaced. Nalle Plastics was sold to U.S. Netting in 1987, after which George Nalle founded a new company, Nalle Enterprises, to develop new applications, such as netting made from conductive polymers. He is the holder of 26 U.S. patents.
Nalle has been recognized for his accomplishments by several organizations, including the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), of which he was a member starting in 1947. He was named a Fellow of the Society in 1991. SPE also presented him with the Fred O. Conley Award for Plastics Engineering Technology in 1995.
Areas of Expertise:
Plastics machinery