Course: Rubber Extrusion Technology
October 10 @ 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
CEUs: 0.76 (To receive the CEUs, attendees must attend the course live and promptly complete the survey evaluation after the course.)
Location: This course is available virtually only and can be taken from the comfort of your home or office – remotely from any tablet, laptop or computer.
Description: This course was designed for rubber industry employees who currently extrude rubber and wish to expand their knowledge of the process or those wishing to gain insights into these processes and how they can be used.
Overview: The course will offer an overview of the variety of commercially viable rubber extrusion processes and examine their strengths and weaknesses. Next, we will go into a more in depth look at the three most common rubber extrusion processes i.e. Liquid Curing Media (LCM), better known as the Salt Bath process, Hot Air Vulcanization (HAV) and Microwave/Hot Air Vulcanization. The emphasis will be on practical knowledge that can be utilized in production. In all areas, specific safety concerns will be highlighted and addressed.
First, the common elements to all extrusion processes, namely the extruder and its components, plus dies and other tooling will be reviewed. The course then will look at each of the three most common and important extrusion processes in more depth, giving useful ideas for process improvements that the participants can apply in their own manufacturing. The course will conclude with a brief look at rubber compound development for the extrusion processes emphasizing important compound design features. Samples of products made using rubber extrusion processes will be available.
Price: $495 Member / $595 Non-member / Free for Undergraduate Student Members / $100 for Other Student Members
Instructor: Richard Strong, Elastomeric Consulting Services
Mr. Strong is currently President and CEO of Elastomeric Consulting Services. He is a 1971 graduate of the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth where he received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and was awarded the Fred E. Busby award for outstanding work in Chemistry. He has over 50 years of experience in various aspects of rubber technology. He has served a Chief Technical Officer for over 30 years of his career. His background includes, raw material selection and approval, compound design, processing and testing with most organic elastomers and silicone including cellular rubber. He has broad expertise in process development, documentation, control and troubleshooting. Finally, he has extensive experience in testing and data analysis of rubber compounds. His consulting business has been conducted both domestically and internationally. It includes developing and presenting educational programs for individual companies and for organizations and colleges and universities. He also does hands-on work with production companies to achieve improvements in their compounds and production processes. He works with raw material suppliers to teach them how their products might be used in the rubber industry. In March 2019, his book Sponge Rubber, An Introduction to Cellular Rubber was published by TechnoBiz as a companion reference for the course he also presents of the same name for the ACS Rubber Division and Akron Polymer Technical Services. He has also developed and presents a second course entitled An Introduction to Continuous Vulcanization, for them. Mr. Strong is married (Roberta) and resides in Northeast Ohio. He has a daughter and a stepson and stepdaughter plus three grandchildren. In his spare time, he enjoys vacationing in Florida or on Cape Cod, working outdoors, and fostering senior rescue basset hounds.