eBook: Driving Out Variation

This is not new news – rubber and polymer processing can sometimes appear to be a crap shoot. From batch to batch a lot can happen to cause variations in your product. Things as simple as humidity in the plant or the mixing speed of a Banbury can change key properties in a batch, which is why manufacturers routinely test each batch that comes out of a mixer using an RPA. But when do you first measure your materials? If it’s at the point right after it drops from the mixer, that’s too late. An RPA should be your first line of defense against variability in the raw materials – either coming into your plant or, if you are a supplier, before leaving your plant for a customer’s manufacturing facility. Rubber product manufacturers need to test their raw materials when they show up on the loading dock before they are put into production. And of equal or greater importance… suppliers of raw elastomers should be providing more than Mooney Viscosity data when they ship out their materials.