Parts built for mud, sun, fuel and cold.
UV, fuel exposure, cold-temperature impact and long duty cycles, designed in rather than discovered in the field.
Book a pre-tooling review →
Industrial & Off-Highway Equipment Engineering
Polymers Engineered for Mud, Sun, Fuel, and 10,000 Hours
Mud and dust. A decade of direct sun. Diesel, hydraulic fluid, and agro-chemicals. Cold starts at -30° and engine-bay heat all shift long. Off-highway equipment punishes polymer parts in ways few products ever will — and ETS brings 41 years of design, material, and failure-analysis discipline to the agricultural, construction, powersports, and industrial-equipment teams that build them.
Talk to an Engineering Team →Purpose-built for equipment program and design engineers who own the part, not the marketing slide.
Mud & DustUV & SunFuel & Hydraulic FluidThermal ExtremesVibration & Impact
Why Off-Highway Is the Hardest Place to Be a Polymer Part
A combine hood sees ten years of sun. A hydraulic reservoir sees pressure spikes every shift. A powersports chassis connector sees cold-start brittleness and constant impact. The passenger-car playbook alone doesn't cover it — durable-goods parts need material selection and part design built for exposure first, because the machine has to earn its 10,000 hours in the field, not in the lab.
☀️
UV & Weathering Durability
Outdoor equipment lives in the sun its entire service life. We teach the material screening and part-design methods that resist UV degradation, chalking, and embrittlement — so the housing, hood, or panel looks and performs the same in year ten as it did on day one.
🛢️
Fuel, Fluid & Chemical Resistance
Diesel, gasoline blends, hydraulic fluid, lubricants, fertilizers, and cleaning chemicals each attack polymers differently. Environmental stress cracking is the field failure that surfaces two years after launch — we show your teams how to screen resins and design it out.
🌡️
Thermal Extremes & Cycling
Cold-start brittleness in a northern winter, engine-bay and hydraulic-system heat in summer, and hot-cold cycling in between. Material selection and joint design that hold dimensions, impact strength, and sealing force across the full duty cycle.
📳
Vibration, Impact & NVH
Constant vibration works snap-fits, bosses, and living hinges loose; stones, stumps, and rollover abuse punish housings and shrouds. And NVH is what the operator judges first — rattle and squeak out of a plastic attachment is a warranty call waiting to happen. Design for all three.
🔒
Seals, Gaskets & High-Pressure Plastics
Hydraulic and pneumatic systems push plastic parts into pressure-vessel territory. Flange design, gasket retention force, creep under bolt load, and burst margins are the details that decide whether a sealing system holds — or weeps — at hour 10,000.
🧪
Material Selection for Harsh Environments
The right resin is the cheapest insurance in durable goods. We give your engineers a structured screening method that weighs UV, chemical, thermal, and impact exposure against cost and processability — before tooling cuts steel and the trade-offs get expensive.
What Your Equipment Engineering Team Takes Back
Our seminar, training, and consulting packages are built for off-highway OEMs and their tier suppliers — engineering orgs that need working methods, not theory.
Live Seminar
Designing Plastic Parts for Assembly — 3 Days, 1,300+ Slides
Structural analysis, material screening, and DFM decision tools, taught by Paul A. Tres — SPE Fellow and author of the industry-standard text, now in its 10th edition. Case histories from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, GM, Chrysler, and Delphi production programs translate directly to off-highway duty: snap-fits under vibration, seals under pressure, panels in the sun.
Consulting Retainer
Design Review & Program Support
Catch warpage, sink marks, and draft errors before tooling. Fixed-price reviews for equipment part families, program launch support, and a senior engineer on call for the material, process, or field-failure questions that come with harsh-environment service.
ETS Academy
Institutionalize the Method
100+ hours of structured training with monthly coaching, so design, materials, and process engineers align on one methodology across every equipment platform you build — not just the three people who attended the seminar.
ChatETS
The Plastics Answer Engine, Free
Trained on 41 years of ETS failure data. Ask it about a UV-stabilized hood panel, a hydraulic reservoir, or a cold-weather snap-fit and get DFM-grade materials and failure answers in seconds. One real question, free, no credit card.
The Market Keeps Growing. The Duty Cycle Isn't Getting Easier.
Off-highway and industrial equipment is a growing polymer market — and the machines that define it come from engineering organizations the scale of John Deere, Polaris, Parker Hannifin, and Schneider Electric. Equipment OEMs and their suppliers don't get to ship a part that survives the lab but dies in the field.
41 years of Failure Analysis That Translates
Our data comes from real production programs — not textbooks. The same failure-analysis discipline that caught issues for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, GM, Chrysler, and Delphi applies to the combine panel, the skid-steer cab, and the hydraulic manifold: the physics of UV exposure, chemical attack, and vibration don't change by market.
The Bar Is Set at Equipment-OEM Scale
Companies the scale of John Deere, Polaris, Parker Hannifin, and Schneider Electric set the standard for durability, service intervals, and warranty exposure — and every tier supplier to those OEMs inherits the same bar. That is the standard every ETS method is built to meet.
41+
Years of Engineering
500+
Companies Served
19,800+
Engineers Trained
10th
Edition of the Standard Text
Built for the people who decide
Whoever signs off, the answer holds up.
A off-highway decision crosses four desks before it ships. Here is what ETS gives each of them.
Risk you can put a number on.
A fixed-price pre-tooling review starts at $3,500. One line of the failure ledger costs $10K–$75K once steel is cut. Seats, training and engineering hours can share a single annual agreement.
What a review covers →An expert built for cross-examination.
Fellow of SPE and author of the field’s standard text. Expert-witness work since 1997. A conflict check comes first, and availability, a CV and fees follow within one business day.
Request a conflict check →Simple to buy, easy to audit.
Pay by check, ACH, purchase order or card. Fixed price where applicable, with scope, timeline and quote agreed before work begins, and an NDA signed on request before we see anything.
Start the paperwork →Ready to Put 10,000 Hours on Your Next Polymer Part?
Tell us about your program — the material, the part family, the exposure environment, or the field failure you're chasing. A senior engineer replies within one business day with a scoped next step, fixed price where applicable, and timeline. Nothing you share leaves ETS; we'll sign an NDA before we look at anything.
Contact Engineering →