Many industries, like paints, coatings, inks, cosmetics, batteries, adhesives, and others, rely on using drawdowns of their products in their R&D and QC departments to ensure global product quality.
Image Credit: Paul N. Gardner Company, Inc.
Assessments of gloss, hiding power, color, opacity, drying time, scrub resistance, and various other properties occur through these drawdowns.
Maintaining a consistent and even drawdown is crucial to ensure consistent and uniform testing because many coating features depend on thickness.
Achieving this manually is very difficult due to the operator's influence on drawdown speed and pressure, which can significantly impact film thickness. The main issues with manual drawdowns are:
- It is challenging for individuals to apply consistent pressure and speed across drawdowns.
- Different technicians cannot maintain uniformity in speed, shear rate, and pressure. For instance, a technician in Cleveland cannot replicate the speed and pressure used by a counterpart in Pittsburgh during the same test.
- Irregularities, including variable film thickness within a single drawdown, can arise from variations in the drawdown direction.
- Although a proficient individual may replicate their drawdown technique consistently, transferring the exact method to someone else proves challenging.
Automatic Film Applicators/Drawdown Machines, such as the byko-drive S and byko-drive XL, address these challenges, ensuring consistent speed and pressure application to the drawdown bar or rod regardless of the technician, drawdown technique, or location.
This guarantees a uniform shear rate and film thickness in the drawdown, yielding consistent results irrespective of the technician or laboratory location.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Paul N. Gardner Company, Inc.
For more information on this source, please visit Paul N. Gardner Company, Inc.