deliver better performing rubber

Making the trip down to the International Elastomer Conference (IEC) 2015 in Cleveland, Ohio? The mission for IEC 2015 is to enhance science, technology and business across the evolving elastomeric community.

Our advanced machine vision solution for the automatic inspection and quality control of rubber bales (BaleGuard), and the work we’ve done with Mitsubishi to rapidly develop new and improved elastomers fit well within the mission of the IEC.

That is why for the second year in a row we’ll be exhibiting BaleGuard and for the first year ever we’ll be exhibiting our solution to rapidly develop new elastomers (ProFormulate). Stop by booth 1159 to hear our story, and find out how we can help you make better preforming products.

Marlene Cardin, BaleGuard Manager, will also be presenting two talks on how we’ve helped manufacturers just like you employ ProFormulate, and multivariate image analysis to develop, and deliver better products. Read on for complete abstracts and timing for our upcoming talks.

Astracts

Advanced Multivariate Imaging Technology for the Rubber Industry

Thursday, October 15, 2015: 10:45 AM | Cleveland Convention Center

In the past decade, industrial machine vision solutions have become popular for automatic inspection and quality control in many industries. As rubber manufactures embrace automation, the benefits of imaging solutions are becoming apparent. Multivariate image analysis is advanced technology that facilitates the extraction of key product quality features from both color and multi-spectral images. Using this technology, real-time detection of product quality based on color, thermal or chemical properties is possible.

This presentation will provide a brief conceptual introduction on the multivariate image analysis techniques and will be highlighted with applicable industrial examples. The presentation will also feature BaleGuard, a novel multivariate-analysis based machine vision quality control solution for the rubber industry. This 6-camera rubber bale surface inspection system automatically detects defects as small as 1mm2 and diverts off-spec bales. Also discussed will be the ability to use the outputs from BaleGuard and other such inspection systems to tune process settings to lower off-spec rates. Other imaging solutions for the rubber industry will also be presented.

Using Multivariate Modeling and Optimization for Rapidly Developing New and Improved Elastomers

Thursday, October 15, 2015: 9:45 AM | Cleveland Convention Center

The continual development of new functional polymers with improved properties and of new products for different application areas is an important area for most chemical companies. There are basically 3 general degrees of freedom in developing a new product: (i) the choice of raw materials or ingredients (eg. specific rubbers, oils, polyolefins, etc.), (ii) the ratios in which to combine these materials (formulation or recipe), and (iii) the process conditions under which to process them. These three degrees of freedom are highly interactive, making it important to consider all of them simultaneously.

In this presentation we discuss multivariate latent variable analysis methods for extracting information from the development databases, multivariate DOE approaches for optimally augmenting the databases, and optimization methods for rapidly formulating products that meet all the desired quality specifications at minimum cost.

Some examples of using this approach include the development of functional polymers for medical devices and for the core materials used in the very popular Srixon golf balls (now used by a large number of the tour pros), the development of novel high performance polymeric coatings, and the development of new food formulations.

Hope to see you at the 2015 International Elastomer Conference.