From your house to the space station, this Pinellas Park company keeps things clear

Madico prides itself as one of the world's leading manufacturers of innovative window film. The products manufactured by the Pinellas Park company affect everyday life.

"You go to the optometrist and you have your eyes dilated, those glasses are ours. You have window tint on your car, those could be ours. On your house, could be ours. Hurricane protection, could be ours. We have materials on the International Space Station. Your cell phone, you have a screen protector; that would be ours," said Madico Inc. president and CEO Shawn Kitchell.

So how do they do it?

"We start with rolls of plastic film. A large roll on one end would go, it would go through. We would apply a coating. The coating would then go up through an oven where we would cure whatever the coating is that we have there. On the other end, we would have another plastic or metal film that we would then bring together and laminate into a single structure. We'll make a big lot, then it would go to our finishing center, where we slit it to various widths, whatever the customer wants and to different lengths,” said Kitchell.

He said putting together a perfect product takes a village.

"It really takes a lot of skill and experience from the operations team to be able to run these products and make them optically clear without distortion, without color variation that would be visible to the eye, without any kind of scratch or contaminant. Anything that's visual would not be desired by the customer," added Kitchell.

LINK: For more information about Madico, https://madico.com/