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Brighton Science Blog
Topic: Surface Preparation & Treatment
Top Challenges Product Development Teams Experience When Bringing a Product Concept to Manufacturing
Modern product development is fraught with challenges due in large part to the sophistication and complexity of the various elements that go into a final product – everything from materials and surface geometries to coatings, bonding, and even staff skills and competencies. Pitfalls await even...
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BTG Labs evolves capabilities, leadership and name to become Brighton Science—bringing unmatched expertise to the emerging field of Surface Intelligence.
BTG Labs, a company that has spent the past 20 years solving critical adhesion issues and developing the world’s first surface inspection technology for leading manufacturers, has evolved its capabilities, leadership and name to become Brighton Science.
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Why Manufacturers Can’t Achieve Manufacturing Innovation Gains by Simply Purchasing Equipment
Innovation is a word you hear tossed around frequently in various industries. Many organizations pursue innovation relentlessly as the key to their success and to gain or maintain a competitive edge. But innovation can be elusive for organizations that don’t quite know how to support it. As a...
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How to Streamline the Product Development Lifecycle
As growing numbers of manufacturers embrace the principles of Industry 4.0, they are experiencing the benefits of its cornerstone concepts, including system and process integration, information transparency, and smart technology, all of which enable manufacturing across a variety of industries...
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Top 5 Trends in Products & Manufacturing Today
Change is perhaps the one absolute constant in manufacturing. Developments - in materials, processes, machinery, testing, products, markets and thousands of other things that affect manufacturing companies - happen every day. To remain cutting edge, optimally efficient, positively adaptable, and...
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Data-informed Use of Contact Angle Measurements Minimize the Risk of Making the Wrong Decision about Product Quality
Deciding whether to reject a part or not based on a quality measurement always carries with it a finite risk: you could unknowingly decide that a perfectly good part is actually bad (a Type 1 error), or you might incorrectly conclude that a bad part is actually good (a Type 2 error). There is a...
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Leveraging the Variability in Contact Angle Measurements to Improve Surface Quality and Process Control
Determining whether your material surface has been adequately cleaned or prepared for bonding, coating, sealing, painting, or printing requires the ability to objectively quantify the chemical and physical characteristics of the top few molecular layers: this is where all the action is. Water...
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How to Master Industrial Adhesion with Scientific Predictability
Manufacturers who produce products with surfaces that require paints, adhesives, or sealants face a challenge in determining the quality and reliability of the final product. The problem is often caused by the fact that most manufacturers don’t have complete control over three critical elements...
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Surface Quality Measurements Enable Plating and Coating Chemistry Suppliers to Guarantee Quality to Their Customers
Automotive supply chains are complex. Nearly 78 million vehicles were manufactured in 2020. Each vehicle may have upwards of 30,000 individual parts. Automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) need to manage billions of parts annually. If any of these parts fail, vehicle performance is...
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What Are Material Handling Best Practices to Keep Surfaces Clean?
Does your business, or your customer’s business, deal with adhesion – either in the form of bonding, coating, sealing, printing or painting? Given that these processes may be occurring either upstream or downstream, does everyone in your organization share a common understanding and appreciation...
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The Best Method of Measuring Contact Angles for Reliable Manufacturing Processes
"Materials Science" sounds niche, and even a little peculiar, but no manufacturer is a stranger to the implications of material science principles for building reliable products. Materials react with one another. Material properties impact how these interactions occur. Accurately anticipating,...
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What are Surfactants and How Do They Impact Surface Tension?
What are Surfactants and How Do They Impact Surface Tension? In recent articles we’ve discussed what surface tension and surface energy are. Manufacturers need to acquaint themselves with these concepts because controlling surface quality through surface energy measurement of solid materials is...
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What is the Difference Between Surface Free Energy and Surface Energy
When it comes down to it, this is another purely semantic question much like the one we dealt with in another article comparing the terms “surface tension” and “surface energy.” Surface free energy is free energy in a particular space - the surfaces of materials. Free energy, in its most...
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How to Measure Surface Tension
The attractive force of the molecules present at the surface of a liquid towards each other is called the surface tension of that liquid. It may seem like a little thing (and in terms of mass, it doesn’t really get much smaller than the top few molecular layers that make up the surface of a...
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What is the Difference Between Surface Tension and Surface Energy
Using adhesives in manufacturing is becoming increasingly common for building everything from massive machines to everyday tech devices. But companies' reliance on the science of adhesion to make sure their products work perfectly and look marvelous didn’t start there. In the centuries since the...
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Don’t Let This Process Gap Ruin Your Polymeric Powder Coating
Powder coating is a widely used painting and coating technique to create protective and aesthetic barriers on products from vending machines at municipal pools to washers and dryers, or cars sitting in your driveway. This ingenious technology, that uses an electrostatic charge to bind polymeric...
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Manufacturing Best Practices for Business Continuity Plans
Even though coming to the end of 2020 has not at all meant the end of the impact of Covid-19, manufacturers are pushing forward to make sure 2021 is not marred by the setbacks of this year. This has not been a normal economic downturn and the ways to remain resilient in the past are not enough...
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Better Consumer Electronics Reliability: Coatings and Adhesives
In a recent study conducted by Instrumental, the top ten most common manufacturing defects were examined. The number one defect that manufacturers fight against is a deficiency in glue. It’s a simple fact that electronic products are relying on adhesive bonding far more than mechanical fasteners...
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What is the Best Surface Quality Inspection for Smart Manufacturing?
Manufacturing processes can, on the surface, appear to be an amorphous web of convoluted conveyors and machinating machinery. But taking a closer look through the eyes of a quality engineer reveals that the process that leads to reliable products is, in fact, itself a series of decisions, each...
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What Medical Device Manufacturers Need From Surface Cleanliness Testing
Quality tests during medical device production need to check a lot of boxes for manufacturers. Testing must increase confidence in product reliability in order to be worthwhile to manufacturers. What’s more, that confidence needs to be measurable and reportable because companies cannot tolerate...
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A Great Idea to Help Save the Aerospace Industry
2020 is a year that will live in infamy for many industries. We haven't even seen the full effect of Covid-19 on economies, which inserts a heap of uncertainty into decision making for manufacturers. But one thing is for sure: we're not going to get back to business as usual anytime soon. The ...
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Everything Breaks: What Reliability Means for Adhesively Bonded Products
The seemingly easy and obvious answer to the question implied in the title of this article is: reliability means no failures whatsoever forever and ever, amen. Sadly, it’s not quite so simple. For manufacturing engineers, reliability is an elastic concept that is particular to each and every...
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Where to Look to Achieve Operational Visibility in Manufacturing
Enterprise manufacturing operations are made up of interlocking, overlapping and critically interdependent processes. Each process in this symbiotic web consists of a series of steps that are only successful when the invisible details are unshrouded and subject to quantitative quality parameters.
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Effective Strategies for Efficient and Reliable Manufacturing That Can’t Wait
The sea change of 2020 has accelerated many shifts that were taking place within manufacturing over the past decade. We are either kicking down the door or being unwittingly swept over the threshold into the next industrial revolution. This transformation requires a paradigm shift from...
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Process Control Innovations for Card Manufacturers
We’ve all experienced the disappointing (and kinda embarrassing) moment when we’re at a register trying to buy armfuls of tortilla chips and salsa and the point of sale card reader screams out that an error has occurred. For credit and debit card manufacturers, these are the moments they want to...
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The Best Method of Controlling HMDS Use in Semiconductor Manufacturing
Semiconductors are one of the most fascinating areas of electronics manufacturing. The ability to “grow” almost irreducibly small integrated circuit components on silicon wafers has made an incredible amount of micronization possible. The theory has always been that as the chips got smaller,...
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Surface Preparation for Reliable Optical Coatings in Photonics Manufacturing
Coatings are an indispensable part of manufacturing photonics. The coatings help determine the most basic functionality of the lenses they are applied to. How much light passes through, what happens to that light when it passes through the lens, does some light get absorbed, are some spectral...
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Ensuring the Durability of Oleophobic Coatings on Consumer Tech
We’re all thinking a lot more about the surfaces we touch and the invisible things that might be on those surfaces. Manufacturers have been thinking about how surfaces interact with our skin and the environment long before COVID-19 made us all much more cognizant of what we can get from touching...
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How to Know if Hydrophilic Coatings on Medical Devices Provide the Necessary Comfort for Patients
Comfort is more than just a nice thing to hope for when it comes to medical devices like tubing, catheters and stents that are implanted into the human body. Comfort, in this instance, is referring to the absence of pain. Having a piece of plastic or metal inserted into your body is never going...
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How to Control Surface Quality for Bonding Dissimilar Materials
We’ve mentioned many times, in various articles, that bonded material systems are becoming the norm for manufacturers in nearly every industry. In order to make finished products more efficient in terms of weight, to cut material costs, to accommodate more automated processes, to lessen the need...
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How to Bond Fiber Reinforced Plastics for Harsh Environments
Many manufacturers have a dual performance concern when their products are out there in the world being used in whatever capacity they were designed for. These parallel interests are: how to maintain appearance and how to guarantee structural integrity through common usage of the products. ...
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Coatings on Car Sensors and Why We Don’t Have Driverless Cars Yet
Our relationship to our vehicles may have changed in the past few months with the idea of commuting to work looking more like a shuffle to the desk across the room rather than a drive to the office across town. However, cars have not dropped from their prominence in our society. With health...
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The Dangers of Missing Vital Surface Quality Information in Production
A major problem for manufacturers is a problem of sensitivity. There is a rampant lack of sensitivity to material surfaces for companies across every manufacturing industry. Granted, it’s not easy to test surface quality to predict the outcomes of common manufacturing processes like adhesive...
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How to Control Additive Blooming in Polymer Films
We all take the ease of peeling open, and resealing packs of double stuff Oreos for granted. The plastic packaging that maintains the freshness of our favorite snacks and foods has become so ubiquitous it doesn’t even register as existing, until we try to open that hotdog pack with our bare...
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The Best Way to Verify Medical Diagnostics Coatings
The biomedical industry runs on testing. Testing is at the heart of meeting extensive requirements to ensure healthcare practices and facilities are safe. A kind of testing that has been on all of our minds lately is the kind of testing that analyzes the presence of diseases. Often these tests...
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Single vs Multi-fluid Contact Angle Techniques Part 2: Why one fluid is all you need for process control in manufacturing
This is part two of a two-part series explaining the finer points of BTG Labs’ approach to helping companies build reliability into their cleaning and adhesion processes through consultation and implementation of novel inspection equipment. These two articles are based on this technical paper...
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Single vs Multi-fluid Contact Angle Techniques Part 1: Surface energy and the attractions between substances
This is part one of a two-part series explaining the finer points of Brighton Science's approach to helping companies build reliability into their cleaning and adhesion processes through consultation and implementation of novel inspection equipment. These two articles are based on this technical...
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Will New Hand Washing Practices Cause Problems for Manufacturing?
Like many industries during the COVID-19 crisis, manufacturing has had to make big changes including scaling back its workforce, enforcing new and intensified hygiene standards and taking a closer look at workplace cleanliness. Looking ahead to the permanent adjustments we’re all making, it’s...
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Demystifying the Greatest Metal Brazing Process Challenges
When thinking about what manufacturing looks like, most people envision sparks flying, metal clanking and fires blazing. This isn’t too far off the mark since metals have been used for bonding joints together to build larger, sturdier and more stable structures since before the first Industrial...
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New Study Proves the Surface Analyst is Dependable for Process Control
One of our favorite services we provide to manufacturers is to help optimize surface preparation techniques for their particular materials and products. It’s our specialty and one of our biggest passions. We feel so strongly about it because we know that if you, as a manufacturer, are able to...
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How to Bond PTFE to Anything
Polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE is a very common material in wide use among almost every major industry. This ultra-lubricious and multi-use fluoropolymer touches everyone from aerospace and automotive industries (as an insulating cover on cabling) to musical instrument maintenance (it’s found...
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A Summary of Surface Treatment Methods for Manufacturers
One of our many mantras at BTG Labs is that all manufacturers who bond, coat, seal, paint and print stand a better chance of fully understanding and controlling their manufacturing process when it’s defined as an adhesion process. We believe this because adhesion is quite literally and...
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Plasma Treatment for Complete and Reliable Cleaning with Richard Burke
At IPC APEX 2020 in San Diego we wanted to explore the ways that electronics manufacturers, who are encapsulating their circuit boards with a conformal coating, are cleaning their boards. What are the benefits to their current processes and what are some things manufacturers could learn to make...
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The 3 Crucial Elements for Good Adhesion in Manufacturing
Excellent adhesion relies on manufacturer’s ability to understand and control three distinct yet interrelated elements. In manufacturing, adhesive bonding takes many forms but the fundamental principles of adhesion are always the same. Even if the application is metal joint welding, parylene...
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Best Approach to Adhesion Failure Root-Cause Analysis
There are a lot of options available to manufacturers who are trying to prevent product failures caused by imperfect adhesion. Many times the plan of attack is to budget adhesion failures into the scrap rate and consider the job done. In other, more dramatic instances, companies will overhaul...
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What is the Best Fast & Accurate Alternative to Dyne Testing?
Dyne solutions have been the most common method of quality checking material surface cleanliness for decades. Their ubiquity and low cost have led them to be heavily relied upon by manufacturers even though they are imprecise, destructive to surfaces and harmful to the user. The science behind...
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How to Know if a Manufacturing Surface is Treated or Untreated
In order to ensure successful bonding, coating, printing, painting, laminating or meet cleanliness standards in manufacturing, material surfaces must be manipulated. One such manipulation that gets surfaces ever closer to being ready for adhesion is surface treatment. There are many operations...
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4 Manufacturing Process Gaps that Create Adhesion Problems
Process gaps emerge in production processes any time manufacturers do not have all the information they need to make decisions that will prevent or solve adhesion problems. Often these gaps are the result of oversights, however, sometimes they can exist and be difficult to detect because they...
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Secrets to Predicting Adhesion Failures in Production
When adhesion failure becomes apparent in manufacturing processes it can seem to come out of nowhere. Very often, there is no problem until suddenly there is. It feels unpredictable, unavoidable and like the best solution is to either eat the loss it brings or just hope it goes away as quickly...
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Why a Surface Quality Inspection Process Ensures Adhesion
Manufacturing processes that involve bonding, coating, sealing, printing, painting, laminating or cleaning need a metric to measure the surface quality of the materials involved. Without such a metric it is impossible to predict whether the adhesion process will be successful or if it's on the...
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A Benchmark for Your Production Surface Preparation Process
Certainty. This is the goal of every manufacturing process. Manufacturers need to have total confidence that every aspect of their production process will go according to plan. The adhesion process needs to be controlled just like any other production operation, with accuracy and on-going...
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Expert Guide to Create a Surface Quality Specification
Various industries have different names for ways they change material surfaces during a production process. In medical fields and other industries dealing with high-reliability polymers they’ll refer to the treatment of materials. In automotive and machining sectors the word used is often ...
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New and Better Surface Quality Test Than the Water Break
There are times when trying to discern if adhesion in manufacturing will succeed seems like a deeply mysterious and opaque puzzle. The water break test is a simple and fairly straight-forward method of detecting hydrophobic (water-repellant) contaminants on surfaces, most commonly on flat sheets...
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Easy Ways to Find Manufacturing Adhesion Failure Sources
When adhesion failure plagues a manufacturing process it can be particularly disruptive. A production process may be humming along just fine and then it suddenly becomes clear that a coating is uneven, or paint is chipping (when it wasn’t before), or joints are weaker than they had been, or film...
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How to Fix Common Causes of Adhesion Problems
Manufacturers often have a large blind spot when it comes to the causes of adhesion problems. This blind spot makes it impossible to solve these problems and generates frustration and loss rather than productivity and adhesion success. Taking the blinders off and taking on adhesion failure at...
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Corona Treatment Concerns You Need to be Taking a Closer Look At
Disclaimer: this article is not about COVID-19, it is about a surface treatment process for better adhesion in manufacturing. If you're looking for information about cleaning, here's an article that discusses the difference between biological cleanliness and chemical cleanliness: COVID-19:...
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How to Get the Most out of Industrial Parts Washers
Parts washers are the heavy-duty, hardworking machines that have become irreplaceable staples in any automotive or machined part manufacturing process. As manufacturing processes have become more sophisticated, the industries using parts washers includes not only industrial metals and aerospace...
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4 Common Factors that Affect Conformal Coating Adhesion
The pervasiveness of electronics in every manufacturing industry has provided unique challenges. Manufacturers are tasked with protecting these componentsin environments that make electronics vulnerable to even minute amounts of moisture, debris and environmental contamination. A useful solution...
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Webinar: BTG Labs + Plasmatreat Team Up for Polymer Surface Activation Discussion
This Tuesday, December 11 at 2pm EST we'll be partnering with Plasmatreat, a developer of surface treatment systems, to present a webinar hosted by Plastics Technology magazine. Dr. Giles Dillingham, BTG Labs' CEO and Chief Scientist, and Khoren Sahagian, Chief Process Engineer and Applications...
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NASA and UVA Work with Brighton Science (formerly BTG Labs) to Co-Author Spectroscopy Journal Article
Brighton Science's Founder and Chief Scientist, Dr. Giles Dillingham and Research and Development Chemist, Brooke Campbell recently collaborated with NASA scientists and researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia on an article published...
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Looking at a Turkey Through the Eyes of a BTG Process Engineer
Ever wonder what a hungry BTG Process Engineer is pondering while preparing the turkey for the feast of gratitude to be shared around the Thanksgiving table? The sharp minds at BTG Labs are ever vigilant in the quest for a surface state properly prepared for the task at hand; whether that be...
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What Does Clean Mean?
This article was co-written by Elizabeth Kidd, BTG Labs' Custom Applications Scientist and Research and Development Chemist. Coating and adhesive bonding are extremely common manufacturing process steps. It may seem obvious, but to ensure success in these applications, surfaces must be properly ...
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Webinar: Getting the Most Out of Your Plasma Treatment
We've collaborated once again with Composites World for a webinar elucidating a surface prep tool that's widely used and seldom understood. Watch the video of the webinar "Strategies to Control and Optimize Plasma Treatment in Composite Manufacturing" to learn how to get the most out of plasma...
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New Webinar Discussing Additive Blooming Effects on Polymer Adhesion
Partnering with Plastics Technology, BTG Labs held a webinar about a topic that’s attracting a lot of attention.
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Adhesive Failure is a Good Thing, and here's why
Adhesion failure in manufacturing is an opportunity in disguise for exceptional business growth...if you do the work to understand the why behind your failures. Say what?
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Your Technicians Are Solvent Wiping Aluminum Wrong (and what to do about it)
Your Technicians are Solvent Wiping Aluminum Wrong “We need to be solvent wiping our aluminum before it’s coated/painted/sealed/insert adhesion-intensive process here.” Technically, that’s correct...you should be. But is that understanding enough?
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How to Uncover Hidden Adhesion Problems in Your Manufacturing Process
“We didn’t even know we were having process problems.” It’s an all-too-common phrase we hear from our customers, when they realize the level of understanding available to them now in their manufacturing operation. Simply put, you can’t solve an adhesion problem that doesn’t exist, and we’re...
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Surface Stories: A Golden Bonding Opportunity
When most of us think of gold, we think of watches, rings, necklaces and even teeth. For electronics manufacturer’s, gold is one of the highest quality and most electrically conductive materials used in electrical component manufacturing. In order to best perform its golden duty as a conductor...
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New Life for Catheter Manufacturing: Proving Surface Quality to the FDA
“We’re manufacturing catheters, but currently we don’t have a reliable way to prove to the FDA that our plasma treatment process is effective and in control” It's no surprise that manufacturing in the medical world carries with it a unique level of responsibility. The comfort and safety of...
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Surface Stories: It's All a Matter of Grit
The quality of a process should be left up to chance. This is commonly the approach that has been taken by manufacturers when working to control their adhesion preparation processes. However, this is due to no fault of their own. In the past, the approach to gaining this understanding was...
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Supplier Product Quality: Common Questions Circuit Board Printers and Manufacturers Ask BTG Labs
We get our circuit boards from an international supplier and don't have a clear understanding of what the , so how can we trust they understand our concerns and are objective with their answers?
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Customer Journey: Medical Tubing Gets Validated
How do we obtain FDA validation on our medical tubing when there’s no way to show quality in a measurable and specific way? A question all too commonly faced in the medical device industry, with the answer meaning acceptance of the product and the ability to sell without risking legal...
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Deck the Hulls: Preparing Ship Hulls for Coating and Painting
Manufacturing a product to withstand the environmental stresses of wind, rain, and sediment is challenging enough. But, when you add saltwater and wave action to the mix, the detrimental threat of corrosion increases significantly. A coating adhesion test is important for quickly testing a...
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Improve You Understanding and Control of Surface Preparation
Watch BTG Labs’ latest video and learn how to gain total surface quality control with surface preparation with the push of a button. This video offers a way to better understand and optimize control of critical surface processes, ultimately giving manufacturers the ability to engineer a stronger...
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Learn How to Gain Total Surface Quality Control
Watch the latest BTG Labs’ video showing the Surface Analyst’s revolutionary method for optimizing critical surface processes in manufacturing. This video demonstrates how the Surface Analyst provides total surface quality control for manufacturers who previously had ineffective methods, or no...
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Guaranteeing Anti-fog Coating Application on Automotive Headlights
The competitive nature of the automotive industry requires manufacturers to engineer the ideal product; failures, no matter how small, are unacceptable and can bring heavy consequences.
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2017 SAMPE High Desert Chapter Symposium: A Recap with BTG Labs’ West Coast Sales Engineer
Last week, SAMPE hosted a one-day technical conference, the High Desert Chapter, to provide an opportunity for composites manufacturers to touch base before the next full length SAMPE show in 2018. BTG Labs’ West Coast Sales Engineer Aaron Berding, hosted a booth for the event. Was this your...
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BTG Labs Takes on Vegas
Image above: BTG Labs Sales Engineer, Derrick Merrell enjoying a game of Jenga at Pack Expo 2017. Last week, BTG Labs traveled to Las Vegas for the largest and most comprehensive packaging event in North America: PACK EXPO 2017. BTG Labs Sales Engineers met with leaders of the packaging...
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Network and Learn with BTG Labs at AMI’s Polymer Testing & Analysis 2017
BTG Labs Lead Sales Engineer Lucas Dillingham will present “What Manufacturers Need to Measure When Controlling Surfaces for Adhesion” at AMI’s Polymer Testing & Analysis 2017 on September 20, 2017 at 12:10 pm. This event will run September 19-20 at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center. The...
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Keeping Your Golf Equipment on Par: Why Top Manufacturers Turn to the Surface Analyst
There’s nothing like arriving at the course on a fresh spring morning. The sun is low, casting long shadows across the green mounds, foggy rays bring hints of warmth, a fresh, dewy smell fills the air, and everything is the most vivid green of the year. It’s time to get out the bag, polish the...
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BTG Labs to Present New Data at ALAC Conference 2017
BTG Labs will present new data on monitoring laser cleaning with Surface Analyst at ALAC (Advanced Laser Applications Conference) 2017. Taking place in Novi, Michigan from May 9-10, this show brings together the latest in advanced laser technology. BTG Labs’ Lead Sales Engineer Lucas Dillingham
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Q&A with Plasmatreat's President and CEO Andy Stecher on the Upcoming Open House and Surface TechDays
This week, BTG Labs will travel to Hayward, California to attend Plasmatreat’s Open House and Surface TechDays. As a partner of BTG Labs, Plasmatreat recruits the Surface Analyst to verify plasma treatments. We value chances like this to collaborate and offer customers complete surface treatment...
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Optimizing your Metal Performance with the Surface Analyst
Manufacturers working with metal and worrying about metal performance are all too familiar with the obstacles that come along with coating, painting, bonding, printing, or sealing it. While the uses of metal in manufacturing are countless and exist in numerous industries, the common denominator...
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Spring Cleaning: BTG Labs Style
It’s the first day of spring. Depending on where you live, this could mean opening the windows, planting seeds, rolling out the motorcycle, and waiting for Opening Day. Here at BTG Labs, we think of spring cleaning. Of course, this usually generates visions of humming vacuums and sloppy mops,...
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Surface Energy Measurement on Food Packaging and Print
Food packaging and print industries often face the obstacle of adhering to low energy substrates such as polypropylene. Measuring the surface’s cleanliness prior to bonding or printing is the key to successful adhesion. The common method for measuring surface cleanliness, or surface energy on...
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Surface Treatment Processes: Flame Treatment
Flame treatment is a surface treatment process used to chemically modify a surface for better adhesion. This process is typically used on low energy surfaces that can be difficult to adhere to, such as plastics and composites. The treatment is also very gentle, posing low risk to the material....
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BTG Labs at AeroDef 2017
AeroDef Manufacturing 2017 is the pivotal event for world leaders of the aerospace and defense manufacturing industry. BTG Labs is excited to exhibit, speak, and teach a course at the conference held March 6-9 at the Fort Worth Convention Center in Fort Worth, Texas. BTG Labs Chief Scientist...
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BTG Labs Speaking at Plasmatreat's Open House
BTG Labs excitedly anticipates Plasmatreat's Open House and Surface TechDays. Held March 30 & 31 in Hayward, California. The 2-day event brings together leaders in the industries of electronics, automotive, and medical device. The Open House will showcase Plasmatreat's new R&D Center and Plasma...
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The Role of Brighton Science's (formerly BTG Labs) Surface Analyst in the Development of the F-35 Lightning II
With the exciting release and testing of the F-35 Lightning II, Brighton Science swells with pride over its involvement in the development of this remarkable aircraft. The F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office recently released a booklet of Small Business Success Stories to share the...
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5 Primary Uses of the Surface Analyst
The Importance of Surface Cleanliness BTG Labs' Surface Analyst™ is a fast, easy, accurate, nondestructive, handheld device. It uses contact angle to measure the cleanliness level of a surface. Understanding and defining surface cleanliness within manufacturing is necessary. How a manufacturer...
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Qualification of Surface Preparation Processes for Bonded Aircraft Repair
Adhesive Bonding Repair The two principle materials used in aircraft manufacturing, metals and polymers, tote particularly reactive surfaces. This leaves them highly susceptible to contamination. As adhesive bonded repairs become more and more popular in the industry, knowing and understanding...
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Automotive Applications Series: Ensuring Success for Formed-In-Place Gasket (FIPG) Applications
Controlling Surface Condition in FIPG Application Increasingly, FIPG processes are replacing traditional gaskets for a variety of automotive applications such as air filters, oil filters, door panels, and external engine parts. The advantages include cheaper material cost, higher throughput...
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