Teknor concentrates target soda bottles
Teknor Color Co. has broadened its range of PET color concentrates to products designed for beverage bottles.
Teknor said its new PETek grades can eliminate handling problems and reduce scrap. While similar to the PETek series for health and cosmetics packaging, the bottle grades have lower loadings.
PETek concentrates are sold as microbeads with the colorant dispersed in a carrier polymer. The beads avoid problems possible with standard wax and liquid colorants, improving dispersion and reducing defects such as haze and swirling, according to the Pawtucket, R.I., company.
Tel. (401) 725-8000 or (800) 554-9885, fax (401) 724-8520, e-mail [email protected].
Eastman renames its copolyester line
Eastman Chemical Co.'s Tsunami-brand copolyester product line has been renamed Cadence.
The company deemed the Tsunami name inappropriate following the magnitude-9.0 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra on Dec. 26 and the resulting disaster.
The recyclable copolyester is used in decorative lamination in calendering four of the nine layers in China's new, second-generation personal identification card. Each layer is 65-330 microns thick with a semiconductor chip encapsulated in the largest layer. The cards are made in China.
The China Ministry of Public Security began issuing the cards in March 2004 and expects to circulate more than 1 billion cards by the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. The cards are intended to reduce both counterfeit paper identification and bureaucratic issues in administering social services.
Kingsport, Tenn.-based Eastman makes Cadence in Kingsport and Southeast Asia.
Tel. (423) 229-6636, fax (423) 229-1525, e-mail [email protected]
Clariant additive gets FDA food-contact OK
Clariant Masterbatches Division said its CESA-extend additive masterbatches have received Food and Drug Administration sanction for food-contact packaging applications.
CESA-extend helps extruders boost melt strength and throughput for lower-viscosity resins such as PET, recycled PET and regrind. The additive masterbatch restores the resin's intrinsic viscosity, making a stiffer extrudate that is less prone to sagging.
Clariant of Holden, Mass., uses an oligmeric reactant, Joncryl ADR 4368 from Johnson Polymer LLC of Sturtevant, Wis., to restore intrinsic viscosity. CESA-extend masterbatches can be made with a range of carrier resins. Besides polyesters, they can improve processability of polycarbonate, thermoplastic urethanes, polylactic acid and nylons, according to Clariant.
Tel. (401) 438-4080, fax (401) 438-4680, e-mail [email protected]
Owens Corning touts glass-fiber roving
Owens Corning has developed a glass-fiber roving aimed at electrical applications for glass-fiber-reinforced plastics.
The Toledo, Ohio, firm said its SE 8400 LS is suited to pultruded FRP long-rod insulators for medium- and high-voltage electrical transmission. Compared with previous boron-free glass fibers, the new product has low levels of microscopic bubble voids, which interfere with insulation.
Owens Corning said the fibers have high corrosion and temperature resistance, quick wet-out for polyester, vinyl ester and epoxy resins, and improved glass-to-resin bonding.
Tel. (419) 248-5939, fax (419) 248-5387, e-mail [email protected]
Premix introduces Pre-Elec compounds
Premix Thermoplastics Inc. has introduced electrically conductive thermoplastic compounds with controlled resistance levels.
Pre-Elec CR compounds allow the user to choose a volume or surface resistivity range. The Milton, Wis., company carefully controls conductive additive levels to achieve the range. The compounds can, in many cases, substitute for more costly, inherently dissipative polymers to provide static dissipation, Premix claims.
Depending on the polymer and resistance range, Premix uses carbon black, inherently conductive polymer alloys or inherently dissipative polymers to tune the resistance range.
Tel. (888) 284-3304 or (608) 868-9988, fax (608) 868-9166, e-mail [email protected]