 |
| Main Menu | News By Date | News By Supplier | News By Category | About Us |
|
THERMOPLASTICS TESTING CENTER AUTOMATES FIRE TESTING:SHORTER THROUGHPUT TIMES
New flame-retardant packages for plastics are the subject of increasingly intensive research around the world. The background to this concerns more stringent regulations regarding fire safety and new guidelines that considerably limit or forbid the use of flame retardants that contain for example bromine or chlorine. The intensive research activity often leads to bottlenecks in fire testing flame-retardant systems. For this reason, the Thermoplastics Testing Center of Bayer MaterialScience AG has automated the fire tests based on the United States Underwriter Laboratories standard and the glow-wire tests to the IEC 60695-2-12 and IEC 60695-2-13 standard. ”We are able to achive a faster testing run now, which considerably reduces our customers’ waiting times. The results are also more reproducible and more objective than those obtained by manual measurements,” explains Dr. Jens Stange, head of the TTC testing department. The conditions for the UL 94 V fire tests and the glow-wire test are highly complex, and the tests were previously performed manually, which is very labor-intensive and time-consuming. Although the testers are given intensive training, for example for the UL test, there is inevitably an element of subjectivity in the results. For instance, the UL test requires the tester to hold the flame manually against the test body for a defined period at a specific angle in several cycles and measure the duration of flaming and whether burning droplets of the ignited material are produced. ”The automation gives us greater degrees of safety and accuracy because we have taken the human error factor out of the equation”, says Stange. The overall work required is reduced. Additionally, more tests can be performed, as measurements can also be made overnight. Testing of the system for automatic UL tests will be completed shortly. Soon it will be possible to conduct screening tests in accordance with UL. At a later date, UL certification for the system will be sought. The automated set-up for the glow-wire tests was developed in conjunction with Zwick Roell AG, a global manufacturer of systems for materials and component testing. http://www.bayermaterialscience.com
|
| ©2008 New Materials International |