Лако-красочные материалы — производство

William F. Harrington

Adhesive Information Services, Mishawaka, Indiana, U. S.A.

I. INTRODUCTION

We are now living in the Information Age, according to many of today’s pundits and commentators. This followed naturally from the Computer Age, which obviously followed the Post Modern Industrial Age, which followed the Industrial Revolution Age, and so forth and so on, all the way back through the thousands of years to the Stone Age, where adhesives were first used. Quite frankly, we are not entirely convinced there has been a lot of progress.

Editorial comments aside, what those commentators are trying to point out is that we live in an age when information on virtually all of humankind’s knowledge, and research, and data, and inventions, and news, and everything else, is usually readily available to whoever wants to find it. In fact, the average person can easily become swamped with too much information, to the point where it can become difficult to deci­pher the good from the bad, the old from the new, the important from the trivial, or the temporary from the permanent. Every business person, whether technical or administra­tive, is inundated with reports, forms, meetings’ minutes, conference proceedings, work­shop manuals, books, trade publications, association news, trade shows, annual reports, CD-ROMs, and more. As a consumer, we are besieged by the telephone, TV, cable TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, more CD-ROMs, community meetings, and the Internet. A major task for any person in this Information Age is simply to be able to sort, categorize, and utilize that information which is pertinent, and wash away the chaff, no matter how interesting or intriguing.

Information is the lifeblood of business, commerce and technology. It has been reported that engineers typically spend about 20% of their time looking for information, and it would be surprising if chemists spent less time than that. It is obvious why this is such a major component of the day’s activities. Given the diversity of manufacturing, even with a somewhat unlimited bank of usable raw materials with which to fabricate goods, it is possible that someone else has already resolved a dilemma similar to the one presently confronting the engineer. And if not the exact problem, probably one pretty close to it, or at least a problem involving one or more materials germane to the problem. In fact, engineers go to school and get a degree based on their ability to learn how engineers have solved problems in the past, and to learn about basic materials and assembly methods.

Now, one would think that an industry as important to the assembly process and as chemically diverse as the Adhesives Industry would have all kinds of resources available to the engineer and researcher. And that assumption would essentially be correct, except for one small factor. And that small factor is, no matter how many products are made with adhesives, no matter how important those adhesives are to making the product a success, no matter how integral a part the adhesive is of the manufacturing process, the fact remains that the Adhesives Industry is a small industry. The Adhesives Industry simply does not have the kind of visibility enjoyed by the Transportation Industry, or the Packaging Industry, or the Construction Industry, or even the Electronics Industry, not­withstanding the fact that none of those industries can survive in today’s economy without adhesives and sealants. Unfortunately, adhesives are a material component of those indus­tries, and as such, information about adhesives becomes submerged in the detail of other processes and products. Which, to a certain degree, compounds the problem of searching for information about adhesives, sealants, tapes, encapsulants, cements, mastics, potting compounds, and grouts. And that very listing illustrates a second part of the problem, which is the diversity of products available in the marketplace.

Almost any organic material, and several inorganic materials, can be made into an adhesive or sealant. Each one of those organic materials can be compounded with myriads of different organic and inorganic materials to achieve a specific set of characteristics. And this has been done by thousands of chemists at hundreds of adhesive manufacturing companies in the United States alone. The result of this startling array of diversity is hundreds of thousands of formulations that leave little pockets of knowledge and data strewn across the manufacturing landscape. Many, many technologies interface with adhe­sives and their processing. And that diversity of applications and products makes it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to collect information about adhesives in a cogent and coherent format for dispensation to engineers and researchers.

But, it has been done. Originally it was published as a 1981 paper by Fred Keimel, called ‘‘Where Can I Find the Information I Need?’’ and presented at an Adhesive and Sealant Council meeting. Mr. Keimel was the founding editor of the Adhesives and Sealants Newsletter in 1977 and was able to compile the research sources he reported on in the Newsletter into the Information Resource Guide, an intermittently published compendium of resources on adhesives and associated technologies. That work continues on an irregular basis, with the sixth edition of the Guide published in 1997. While the total complement of resources reported in that Guide is far too great to be considered for publication here, what follows is an abridged version of that Guide, and a working model for finding the information needed.

An important caveat is needed at this point. Information is available on three different levels. The first is the academic level and includes pure research into the whys and hows of the world around us, even the worlds we cannot see. Pure research is more concerned with developing a rational understanding of the elements of surfaces, the phy­sical nature of bonding materials, the nature of bonds themselves, the kinetics of reaction, modeling adhesive performance, developing appropriate test criteria, and so on. Quite often, this type of basic research is conducted at universities and government sponsored laboratories around the world, but sometimes forward thinking industrial firms sponsor pure research in their own laboratories. The second level of information is developmental and is produced by companies that make raw materials for adhesives and sealants and by companies that manufacture adhesives and sealants. By and large, these companies have determined a need for a particular kind of product in a specific industry to solve a particular set of parameters and set forth to develop and produce that product.

Sometimes the kind of work accomplished by industry is quite similar to that accom­plished by academic research, but generally more focused on resolving a specific problem or application. Once that goal has been achieved, product(s) are introduced to the trade with varying amounts of information, based on the level of inquiry originally undertaken. Finally, the third level of information is anecdotal. It comes from people who actually use adhesives and sealants, or people who help companies use adhesives and sealants. This includes the engineers and applications people at user companies, but also sales, labora­tory, and technical service people from adhesive manufacturing companies, and from manufacturers of applicating and curing equipment. The information at this level often is generally more specific as to end use applications and materials of construction for a particular purpose. Papers, journal and magazine articles, book chapters, and conference presentations are made based on the results of all three levels of research and information. All three levels have differing degrees of value to individual engineers and researchers.