Pioneering Processes & Products
Whitford products sell in more countries than we can count (due to resellers, we don’t know the total number), frequently to customers who are not yet skilled in the application of high-performance coatings. Further, our business is not immune to the rule of Murphy’s Law.
So, we are often called by customers with coating problems. They need help, and they need it fast.
In some instances, we will dispatch a technician to the customer’s facility (which, in more than a few cases, is several thousand miles away). In others, we will attempt to replicate the problem in our laboratories, which are set up to be microcosms of the real world in which our customers operate.
First, we subject retained samples of the coating in question to a battery of tests, just to make sure the problem is not the product itself. Then, we reproduce the basic conditions of the customer’s plant on our own equipment.
Whitford maintains a variety of processing equipment: metal-treatment lines, etching lines, standard air spray, HVLP, electrostatic spray, powder-coating facilities, roller coating, curtain coating, dip/spin, ovens, etc. This permits us to replicate the entire application process and pinpoint precisely where the problem is occurring — quickly and efficiently.
It includes precise coatings characterization and failure-analysis capabilities that enable researchers to solve a variety of coating problems.
Maintaining such equipment provides us with another opportunity: the enhanced ability to develop new, better, more efficient and environmentally friendly coatings. The ability to duplicate the customer’s process — from substrate treatment through application to the final cure — accelerates and simplifies the problem-solving process.
It also leads to important performance improvements in coatings that work better and save money for our customers as they reduce significantly the contamination of the environment.
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