Maintenance Technician

Maintenance Technician – Plastic Injection Molding

Job Type: Full Time – Hourly Location: Tallapoosa, GA Reports to: Maintenance Supervisor

Job Summary:

The Maintenance Technician keeps injection molding presses, auxiliary equipment, and molds running safely and at rate. The role troubleshoots and repairs hydraulic, electrical, pneumatic, and mechanical systems and carries out preventative maintenance. It also supports Processing with mold changes, press startups, and basic process adjustments. Our Philosophy: Remember Safety, Quality, Quantity in that order!

Key Responsibilities

• Troubleshoot and repair hydraulic, electrical, pneumatic, and mechanical systems on hydraulic and electric injection molding presses.
• Diagnose faults using electrical schematics, hydraulic diagrams, PLC logic, and press controller alarms.
• Maintain and repair auxiliary equipment, including dryers, loaders, blenders, TCUs, chillers, robots, conveyors, and granulators.
• Perform scheduled preventive maintenance, such as oil and filter changes, hose inspections, heater band and thermocouple replacement, and lubrication.
• Support plant utilities, including compressed air, cooling water / tower systems, and 480V three-phase power.
• Perform basic in-press mold maintenance: water lines, O-rings, ejector and slide lubrication, venting, and cleaning.
• Perform mold changes, including hanging molds and connecting water, hot runner, core-pull circuits, and end-of-arm tooling.
• Start up presses from approved process sheets and make limited adjustments within approved windows to correct defects such as short shots, flash, sink, and splay.
• Verify correct resin, colorant, regrind ratio, and drying conditions at startup, and escalate issues outside the process window to Process Engineering.
• Respond quickly to breakdowns, find the root cause and recommend fixes that prevent repeat failures.
• Record work orders, downtime causes, and parts used in the CMMS, and recommend critical spare parts to stock.
• Install, level, and commission new presses and auxiliary equipment.
• Follow all safety, lockout/tagout (LOTO), arc flash, 5S, and quality system requirements (ISO 9001 / IATF 16949 as applicable).

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of industrial maintenance experience, including at least 1 year in plastic injection molding.
• Working knowledge of hydraulics, pneumatics, and 120/240/480V AC and 24V DC control circuits.
• Able to read electrical schematics, hydraulic diagrams, and mechanical prints.
• Experience with mold changes and press startups on hydraulic and/or electric presses (e.g., Arburg, Milacron, Nissei).
• Able to use multimeters, megohmmeters, and hand and power tools.
• Basic computer skills (Excel, Word, CMMS / ERP systems).
• Good troubleshooting, documentation and communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• PLC experience: troubleshooting Allen-Bradley or Siemens controls, servo drives and robot systems.
• Hot runner experience with controller, heater, and thermocouple troubleshooting.
• RJG Systematic Molding, Master Molder I, or equivalent scientific molding training.
• Welding, fabrication and basic machining skills.
• Forklift and overhead crane certification.
• Associate degree or technical certificate in industrial maintenance, electrical or mechatronics.

Work Environment & Physical Requirements

• Production floor environment with exposure to heat, noise, hydraulic oil, high voltage, and moving equipment. PPE required.
• Able to stand and walk for long periods and lift up to 40 lbs.
• Flexibility to support other shifts, weekends, overtime, and on-call rotation based on production needs.