Katrina Jensen, Manual Injection Molding Quoting Manager

Get to Know Katrina

My name is Katrina Jensen, and I am the Injection Molding Quoting Manager.

I went to college for biomedical engineering and then started my career with a medical device contract manufacturer. When I worked there, we were just getting into plastic injection molding. I was put in charge of maintaining those machines and working on new programs, starting with prototype and then scaling to production. That experience helped me understand the plastics business. Now, at Xometry, I manage a team of engineers with backgrounds similar to my own who quote new molding opportunities.

Building the Perfect Plastic Bottle 

At Xometry, we had a customer with a novel idea for a new plastic bottle. Bottles are typically blow-molded, but they really wanted an injection-molded bottle because it needed a mixer to access the liquid from the bottom. We spent the next few months with this customer working out a design, making design changes, making prototype tools, and having them test the designs at their facility. Those bottles, and the system they work with, are being sold for commercial and residential use. It's nice to see where a project started and how it's going. Read more about it in our case study. 

We had another customer who was having difficulty getting parts from an overseas manufacturer. They had purchased with a different vendor, and they couldn't get their parts shipped on time. We were able to duplicate that program in the States and still give them really good pricing and parts. They were so happy with us that we've been able to keep building parts off of those tools, and the shipping became a lot easier. We have quite a few programs that we are working on where customers may have started overseas but really want a solution in North America. We have been able to work with many customers to fulfill their needs and their timelines by bringing their programs closer to home.

From Prototype to Long-Term Project

It is really rewarding to be able to see a program go from start to finish. From the first revision, we can look at a customer’s parts, give material feedback, and examine design for manufacturability. Many of the programs we work on extend out months, even years, and we get attached to some programs that we put our hearts into. It is definitely rewarding when you see that customers are happy. We can go on their websites and say, "Oh yeah, we built that part."

Constant Learning Helps Us Grow

We are an on-demand Internet-based manufacturing instant quote company, and sometimes it's easy to forget that there are people behind all of it. Whether it's my team, the sales team, or the development team — we strive to make this experience the best a customer can have so they keep coming back. We strive to be the premier manufacturing company: always shifting, expanding, and modifying to be what our customers and partners need us to be.