Ted Lightfoot

About the instructor

With over 35 years of experience working for DuPont, helping build the International Society for Coating Science and Technology (ISCST), twenty years of teaching short courses through AIMCAL (now the Association of Roll-to-Roll Converters or ARC), and three years as a member of an ARC Technical Consultant. Ted Lightfoot has a proven history as a mentor, teacher, and problem solver in film casting, coating, drying, and laminating.

Ted was the first American to be named an Industrial Fellow at the University of Minnesota Coating Fundamentals program, joined the AIChE Area 1k – Mechanics of Thin Film Coating steering committee and became a founding director of the International Society of Coating Science and Technology). He is a past president of ISCST and currently serves as Vice President – Americas. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Plastic Film and Sheeting. These experiences, and his time in R&D in DuPont, help him maintain a perspective on the state of the art in coating.

During Ted’s career with DuPont he also worked as a hands on Aid To Operations (ATO) engineer (carrying a pager so he could come in to keep multiple lines running) and supervising the ATO engineers supporting fluoropolymer film production in Buffalo and Circleville Ohio. In plant support roles he was the technical lead in four projects that increased productivity on sold out assets from 50-100% with an impact in the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Ted was the technical leader of the team that reduced defects in photovoltaic back sheet film from defects per square meter to less than one defect per thousand square meters for which he was recognized with a DuPont Engineering Excellence Award.

While with DuPont, Ted also worked closely with customers – both in traditional technical service (where he had responsibility for helping customers coat and laminate fluoropolymer films) and as a Six Sigma Black Belt working at the customer (for which he won a West Pharmaceuticals award for Excellence in Six Sigma). To date he has worked on nearly 300 coating lines – some with DuPont, but most with customers trying to develop new processes or improve capability on existing processes. His knowledge of coating is not just theoretical – he has learned plenty the hard way (and has the scars to prove it).