An international manufacturer of cabling required a new manufacturer for their proprietary polymeric materials. Previously some material had been manufactured by another toll manufacturer and some made in-house but they now required a new contract manufacturing partner.
The first project involved:
- The larger scale manufacture of a base catalysed condensation polymerisation of an aldehyde and ketone.
- Demonstration that resin made by Witton matched the performance of resin made by their previous toll manufacturer.
- New testing regime to meet their requirements.
- Casting the molten resin into blocks rather than the use of a cooled belt to reduce CAPEX requirements.
- Choice of the correct packaging and pack size to allow our customers operators to easily handle the solid resin and charge the correct amounts to their process.
- Over 1000 successful batches made
A second related but more critical project involved:
- The scale up of a step growth free radical polymerisation of an aromatic material to give an oligomeric antioxidant.
- Demonstration that this material made by Witton matched the performance of resin made previous in-house.
- Setting up a new GPC analysis and specification based on a “Gold Standard” sample to ensure this in the future
- Casting the molten resin into blocks using the packaging chosen above followed by vacuum drying/grinding to give a dry powder of the correct particle size.
- Over 1000 of successful batches made