Winter.
That means snow, ice, and freezing rain. With that comes trickier driving conditions. One of the most important things a vehicle can have in bad weather is a set of reliable windshield wipers.
So often, wiper blade design includes vents, which is fine in warmer weather. When winter rolls around in colder climates, those vents can become clogged with ice and snow in inclement weather, decreasing the wipers’ effectiveness precisely when the driver needs them to work their best. The windshield doesn’t get a clean swipe…the rubber of the blade deteriorates sooner than it should…what a pain!
To help with just this kind of cold-weather problem, Midwest Rubber developed a winter windshield wiper hood that is uniquely shaped to most effectively prevent windshield wipers from becoming clogged with ice and snow. Just like a hood on your coat, this wiper hood helps deflect the elements. In addition to preventing buildup, the hood allows for cleaner, smoother wipes along the windshield. It also can actually help prolong the life of the wiper blades and the internal mechanisms of the wiper system, since the entire wiper is not having to work its way through a crust of snow and ice to get moving.
For this particular project, we designed the wiper hood to accommodate a new product developed by one of our automotive OEM customers. Our engineers figured out a way using our dip molding process to manufacture the product in-house, which allowed us to keep the final product price point competitive for our customer. We could also confidently speak to the durability of the wiper hoods, since we extensively test all of our products in-house!
We take pride in the fact that our winter wiper hood design is preferred in many heavy snow climates over our competitors’ solid blade designs or even new blade designs. Midwest Rubber currently manufactures and sells over 10 million wiper blade hoods annually to five international companies, accounting for over 95% of the global wiper blade hood market.
We like a challenge around here. The Midwest Rubber team has a long history of developing and producing custom solutions to help our customers solve problems. If you have a manufacturing challenge, contact us and let’s see what we can figure out together.
