Coatings World - April 2009

opment is a collaborative effort.

“Everything we do, we have to do globally, and we need innovation on a global scale,” France said. “We first try to do innovations internally, and if we can’t find a solution inside, we look to see what our partners can do. We do what we do best and find someone who can do the rest.”

Factors for UV and EB Technology.”

There was also a special short course, “Practical Polymer Chemistry for the UV/EB Professional,”led by Byron Christmas of the University of Houston.

CONCURRENT SESSIONS On Feb. 18, uv.eb West 2009 broke up into a variety of day-long concurrent sessions.

Wood finishing was a topic of interest during UV/EB West 2009. Kyle Sass of BASF led off the session with “Overview of Water-based UV Coatings—General Properties, Ease of Application, Economics & Trends.” Greg Smith of R&DCoatings then discussed “Economics of Using UV Finishing.”

Matt Guzzetta and Steve Baldwin,

ADVANCED TOPICS

The afternoon session began with Raymond Oliver of Arrow Science Consulting, who presented the keynote speech on new technologies. “It is important to expand the horizon of future technologies,” Oliver said. “Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are giving us new functional materials.”

Organic photovoltaics (OPV) is an area of great interest to Oliver. “Silicon-based PV costs $3 per watt; OPV can get to 35 cents per watt by 2015,” he said. “One of the holy grails is the ability to print kilometers of displays in minutes.”

Dick Stowe, Fusion UV Systems, discussed “Advanced UV Measurement & Process Control,” followed by Paul Mills, UV Robotics, with “Advancements in UV Curing Equipment: Robotics, LEDS & Beyond.”

Tony Bean of Sun Chemical discussed “What End Users Should Know About Their UV/EB Formulations.” He noted the key drivers to switching to UV and EB, adding that very few people ever change back.

“Thousands of people have converted to UV and EB, and very few have reverted because UV and EB are good technologies,” Bean said.

Mike Idacavage of Cytec, who is serving as RadTech International NA’s president, next spoke of “Cutting Edge Uses of UV/EB Technology.” He pointed to seven growth areas for UV and EB: photovoltaic systems; sustainability; waterborne, UV/EB curable materials; field-applied applications; hard coats for plastics; food packaging; and auto refinishing.

Golden closed the first day’s session with “Environmental, Health and Safety

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