Category: News Releases

Over the past year, RDAbbott employees across North America partnered with more than 55 organizations, including food banks, shelters, senior centers, and schools. From Garden Grove, California, to Barberton, Ohio, and home offices across the continent, employees found meaningful ways to support their communities—whether by volunteering, donating essentials, mentoring students, or honoring first responders and veterans.

Cancarb Limited has published a Technical Bulletin that describes the advantages of incorporating Thermax® Thermal Carbon Black in various formulations of polystyrene (PS) foam. The study documents the dispersion and processing benefits of Thermax® and uses similar expansion, density, open-cell content, and compression properties as the control. Adding 4 wt.% thermal black resulted in a ~ 3% reduction in thermal conductivity and a ~ 14% reduction in thermal effusivity.

Cancarb Limited has published a Technical Bulletin that shows how formulating EPDM rubber with Thermax® N990 improves compound dispersion, decreases mixing energy, reduces compound viscosity, and supports potential cost reductions.

RDAbbott’s Cristina DiFranco will present “Elastomer-to-Metal Adhesion: Best Practices for Adhesive Mixing and Application” at the Quebec Rubber Group’s Technical-Commercial Dinner on October 24, 2024. The focus is Chemlok® rubber-to-substrate vulcanizing adhesives, and the content will be similar to previous events that RDAbbott has hosted in collaboration with Parker Lord.

RDAbbott is announcing the retirement of Scott Legleu, a rubber industry veteran with 43 years of service. Scott joined RDAbbott as a Business Development Manager in 2017 but began his rubber industry career decades earlier after working as a schoolteacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Colleagues from across the industry and throughout Scott’s long and successful career describe him as honest, helpful, kind, and a good listener.

Cancarb Limited has earned its third Platinum Sustainability Rating from EcoVadis, a global provider of corporate and environmental scorecards. The maker of Thermax® medium thermal carbon black also received EcoVadis’ highest rating in 2021 and 2023. Cancarb uses waste heat from its energy-efficient operations to help power its community and has developed a low-PAH product to address environmental health and safety concerns.

RDAbbott recently hired Cristina DiFranco and Brittany Ploep as Account Managers. Cristina is based in Cleveland, Ohio, and serves the Northeastern United States. Brittany will be based in and serve the Southeastern United States. As RDAbbott Account Managers, they will build relationships, foster growth, provide technical support, communicate with suppliers, and provide the best overall solutions for customers in their respective regions.

RDC S.r.l., a global supplier of pre-dispersed chemicals and additives, has revised its product brochure for the rubber and thermoplastic industries. The highlights include a new section about the company’s Premix® Specialties and new pages about its Veaflame flame suppressors and Films and Bags for Chemical Pre-Dosing. There are several other changes as well.

Alpha Technologies is sponsoring an interactive quiz through Rubber News about rubber raw materials. This short seven-question quiz is available through mid-July and prompts participants to answer questions about processing, polymerization, and testing. All quiz takers will receive a free digital copy of “6 Test Methods to Reduce Raw Material Variation,” an e-book from Alpha Technologies. There will also be a drawing for a Grand Prize and Second Prize during the week of July 15, 2024.

RDAbbott demonstrated its material characterization and data mapping expertise at NPE 2024 and is offering these same capabilities to customers. RDAbbott’s research team characterized liquid silicone rubber (LSR) and provided multi-point data to Moldex3D, which then used its computer-aided engineering software to produce flow predictions and cavity fill simulations. Virtual molding simulations can save companies considerable time and money but require robust and reliable data sets, which can be challenging with LSRs.