Huntsman Advanced Materials Supports Innovation through Investment in Testing and Processing Capabilities

Patricia Albisser 08/10/2010

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Huntsman Advanced Materials has announced a substantial investment in its Research and Testing programme at its Basel laboratories. Recognised by customers as offering the most sophisticated testing facilities available, its newly equipped laboratories further enhance Huntsman’s state-of-the-art testing practices and facilities.

The company’s worldwide reputation for innovation, endorsed by a number of prestigious international industry awards, has centred around the Basel laboratories.

Whilst eagerly anticipating results of the forthcoming ICIS Innovation Awards in which the new Araldite® Digitalis manufacturing machine has been shortlisted, Huntsman has won two Materialica Awards. It has also won the EuroMold Gold Award for the most innovative worldwide development in additive manufacturing and several JEC Awards for innovative materials with both its composite materials and Araldite® adhesives. These awards are all evidence of a commitment to technical excellence that is driven from the laboratories which lie at the heart of Huntsman’s Basel headquarters.

Visitors to the facility are immediately impressed by the Material Testing department where new X-ray tomography and robotic equipment serving several tensile/compression testing machines have been installed to improve the non-destructive evaluation capabilities on high-value materials and to increase the number of mechanical tests performed, respectively. These new devices complete a huge range of cutting-edge equipment which allow extensive characterisation capabilities in domains such as mechanical (static, dynamic, impact), electrical (resistivity, permittivity, high voltage), rheological, thermal (reactivity, resistance), aging (thermal, shocks, humidity, UV) and flammability behaviour.

In order to enhance customer satisfaction by improving testing qualities, a Six Sigma project has been in operation for more than 12 months in the Material Testing department, continuously measuring and improving operational performance and practices.

Regularly examined by the Swiss Accreditation Service (SAS), the Material Testing department is also Germanisher Lloyd (GL) approved with a special focus on Marine and Energy (Wind) sectors. It is also accredited by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which determines the flammability behaviour of materials. The department recently won the ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for 12 new testing and calibration tests – making a total of 36 accredited standards achieved.

In parallel to the Material testing department, the Analytical Sciences and Advance Characterisation department is dedicated to physico-chemical investigations and supports research and testing activities. In this modern laboratory, chromatography (HPLC, GPC, GC), spectrometry (mass, nuclear magnetic resonance – NMR, infra-red, UV-VIS), microscopy (electron scanning microscope, atomic force microscope and profilometer) and other specialised techniques (surface energy, calorimetry for instance) are helping to address such topics as reaction monitoring, structure elucidation, structure-properties relationship, trace analysis and surface properties. In addition, the laboratory is devoted to supporting REACH compliance.

When going through the facilities at Basel, visitors are also pleasantly surprised by the application laboratories where Huntsman offers extensive technical support based on a scaled-down production set-up. Its application laboratories function not only as a means of generating data and expert knowledge, but also provide a training facility for the company’s long serving associates, distribution network and customers.

The laboratories enable Huntsman to test its existing and new materials within a realistic industrial production environment. Here, customers can expect advice and practical recommendations from application engineers on how to optimise the use of huntsman’s products in their manufacturing processes. These facilities contain a complete range of exceptional production equipment to process all types of thermosets used in adhesives, composites, tooling, casting, encapsulation, 3D building and various coating and thin film applications, supported by computer simulation capabilities which speed-up ideal processing parameters identification.

Huntsman’s composites laboratory recently received brand new Resin Transfer Moulding (RTM) equipment which complete the existing prepreging, infusion, presses and autoclave curing capabilities. In addition to this, in its adhesives laboratory, Huntsman has invested in new piston pumps, gear pumps and screw pumps which enable processing systems with extremely low viscosity to systems heavily filled or those with thixotropic rheological behaviour.

For tooling technologies, a laboratory dedicated to Seamless Modelling Pastes (SMP) applications has been created, equipped with industrial type machines.

Huntsman is also maintaining its leading global position through ongoing investment in its casting and encapsulating application laboratory, with modern equipment and replicating machines used in the production environment. Conventional, vacuum assisted or Automatic Pressure Gelation (APG) casting equipment with several different dispensing technologies are offered to customers and development teams who can test and evaluate in real conditions, process changes and create new mold designs and products.

A laboratory specialized in surface engineering technologies is supporting activities on protective coatings, liquid dielectrics or etch resists for the printed circuit board industry. In a 600 m² clean room, it also supports new applications in fast developing domains such as Solar (including photovoltaic) and organic-electronics (organic light emitting diodes, for instance).

3D prototyping and 3D rapid manufacturing activities are supported by a state-of-the-art equipped laboratory, in which can be found several types of stereolithography (SL) machines, 3D jetting machines and the brand new, award winning Araldite® Digitalis machine.

Commenting on the recent investment, Philippe Christou, Huntsman European Technology Director said: “When visiting the laboratories or bringing their molds in for in-house trials, customers are frequently astounded by the sheer size and exceptional quality of our facilities. Our success is based on our commitment to research and development and it will continue to play a pivotal role in our business. We work in almost every industry sector and we will build on our past, consider the present and test new ideas for the future to help our customers succeed.”

Huntsman has formed close co-operations with a number of partners from universities, research institutes, start-up companies and the industry to develop cost effective global solutions.

More than 9,000 companies around the world use Huntsman adhesives, tooling materials and composite resins for design, prototyping and manufacturing adhesives, tooling materials and composite resins. In markets such as adhesives, aerospace, automotive, coatings, construction, electronics, medical, marine, power transmission and distribution, sports equipment and wind power generation, Huntsman is leading the way.

For further information please contact;

Patricia Albisser
Huntsman Advanced Materials (Switzerland) GmbH
K-401.5.77
Klybeckstrasse 200
CH-4057 Basel
Switzerland
Phone: +41-61-299 2664
Fax: +41-61-966 8130

E-mail:patricia_albisser@huntsman.com

www.huntsman.com