Coatings encompass products ranging from inks to paints to stains and more. They touch nearly every aspect of our daily lives, and many companies – small to large – contribute to this market.
For small to mid-sized companies, it may not be feasible to invest in extensive facilities and costly equipment used to test product quality and performance under extreme conditions and environments. If you fall within this category, you may instead rely on lab testing your product to ensure performance and stability under more common environments. And in most situations that will suffice.
But what happens when your product faces more extreme scenarios and fails? “A lot of the issues with a lot of different coatings are because they’re designed in a laboratory setting,” said Ben Woodall, chemist at CJB Applied Technologies. “So they’re done under ideal circumstances. And often when you hand them off to a consumer, you’re surprised they’re not happy with the results. There are often unforeseen situations or conditions that are outside of the scope of what is found in a normal laboratory setting.”
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Uncovering the issues
Understanding the root cause of poor performance involves conducting a variety of tests that may require equipment, expertise or facilities your company lacks. For example, testing your product under a variety of conditions necessitates the ability to define and manage experiments within controlled environments.
“These types of experiments are only successful when backed by scientific rigor, and that’s where our teams excel,” Woodall explained. “We make sure our testing is repeatable and fine-tuned so we can identify the variable or variables that impacted performance. We’ll recommend corrections and work collaboratively with you to implement, test and make your product perform better than what you sent us.”
Creating controlled environments can take on many forms. At CJB Applied Technologies, we can use our greenhouse to create different environments, including the use of intense UV lights and other elements that mimic extreme environments your product has faced and may face in the future. It can also involve our analytics team conducting in-can testing.
“We can do in-can stability testing over an extended period of time and under extreme conditions, like high heat, freeze-thaw, extreme low temperatures, low oxygen, high oxygen,” Woodall said.
“We take our chemistry seriously and have an excellent team of chemists with expertise in procedures, including strike tests, slide angles and rub tests, to test adhesion, resilience and any other characteristics that are important to our customers. We can look for the specific compounds of interest to be sure nothing is degrading over time, there’s no volatilization, and everything is in the formulation at the levels they’re supposed to be,” he elaborated. “Our chemists help us support our findings and ensure that the finished goods we develop are chemically sound and stable.
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Implementing corrections
After uncovering what caused the issues, the task of making corrections begins. They could be simple fixes your team can make in-house, or they could be more complex and have a better chance at success by outsourcing. “It is all a matter of how badly did it perform, how far off the goal it is,” Woodall said.
If the correction needs to be outsourced, our teams possess the expertise and resources to help you improve your formulation. We’ll work with you to source the materials, develop the most appropriate formulation type, conduct testing to ensure we’ve corrected the identified issues, and produce small volumes for additional real-world testing you may want to conduct.
“We are nimble, work collaboratively with you, are flexible, and have the expertise and bandwidth to jump in and correct issues, as well as serve as your R&D team. We provide technical support from idea to finished good,” Woodall concluded.
