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TECH WATCH In this business, the coating reflects on you. © 2017 Eastman. Eastman brands referenced herein are trademarks of Eastman or one of its subsidiaries. TETR-AUTO-5378 8/17 Your reputation lasts only as long as your coating does. In a world where the environment is tough on coatings—and consumers are tough critics—protect your brand with Eastman Tetrashield ™ protective resin systems. Tetrashield isn't just another resin system; it's an Eastman technology. And we have a long history of developing innovative solutions for the toughest problems. With Tetrashield, we've redefined what coating systems can do—deliver durability and flexibility to enhance appearance, improve weatherability, bolster scratch resistance, and support sustainability. There's a lot on the line when it comes to your coating. Protect it all with Tetrashield. For sample panels or more information, visit Eastman.com/Tetrashield/ADP5. Painting by Smaller Numbers As anyone who's had a significant door ding or worse could tell you, exterior paint isn't just paint. A vehicle's exterior finish typically includes tiny metal flakes that give it that shimmering wink that draws us into the showroom. Borrowing from a medical imaging technique called "optical coherence tomography" (OCT), researchers from the University of Liverpool ( liverpool. ac.uk ) say they've been able to automatically measure the size, number and orientation of metal flakes in industrially applied car paint. The approach could help speed up quality assurance at the end of the production line. "The painting step is a bottleneck in the manufacturing process," says Yaochun Shen, lead researcher on the project and professor at the UK university. "If the finished car paint does not meet requirements, then it must be removed chemically and the car completely repainted. This not only costs time and money but also creates chemical waste." The UK scientists report using OCT can identify flakes that are as small as 1-micron thick. The automotive industry typically relies on ultrasound imaging to examine car paint during the quality assurance phase which, according to the researchers, can't image metal flakes found in many contemporary paints. Ultrasound also requires physical contact with a sample, while the OCT method doesn't touch the paint. "Using the technique for monitoring in-line processes could also help automotive manufacturers better understand the whole coating process," says Shen. "With that better understanding, the car industry may be able to develop new coating processes or new types of coating." Tailored to be Made Makers of three-dimensional printers know that for both mass manufac- turers and small-scale producers, parts customization is king. This summer, Solidscape ( solid-scape.com ), which is owned by Stratasys ( stratasys.com ), released its S500 3D printer, and a pair of casting and dissolvable support materials, innovations they say up the customization ante considerably. The S500 was designed for industrial casting manufacturers that need to produce complex parts where dimensional accuracy and near-perfect external and internal surface finishes are critical. It also was designed with speed in mind, by making castable parts and creating custom molds from wax patterns. "The growing global demand we see for manufacturers to develop more short production runs of precision parts requires tools that can help them iterate design cycles quickly," said Fabio Esposito, Solidscape's president. The wax patterns produced by the machine can be cast directly in metals or can be used to make master molds, removing the tooling step in production, Esposito said. Embedded in the S500 is what Solidscape calls "Solidjet Technology," which builds a support structure of solid wax that enables organic shapes with undercuts, overhangs, thin walls and interlocking parts. This is capable of producing castings with consistent interior and exterior surface finishes. Solidscape also released a new material called "Midas" that enables clean burnouts without expanding. Those qualities make it an optimal material for metal casting of stainless steel, nickel and other alloys. 14 GEAR GEAR