MEDFORD, Ore., Feb. 3 – Carestream Tollcoating, a premier provider of roll-to-roll precision contract coating services, significantly enhanced its contract-manufacturing portfolio in 2014 to reduce customer development costs and improve product quality. Upgraded equipment and capabilities include:
- Expanded services to hardcoat polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and other substrates used in electronics and graphics applications.
- Investments in the Oregon plant for improved coater flexibility and more precise, higher quality coating and slitting operations. The new equipment and technical resources provide enhanced production and pilot coating capabilities, resulting in faster scale-up and step changes in on-line defect detection and product quality.
- Process and operational upgrades to reduce airborne contamination at the Oregon and Colorado clean room coating operations. These improvements, combined with new full-time staff, enable higher quality and yields for advanced materials applications including optical and medical films.
- Improved product development at the Colorado Coating Assessment Laboratory. Additional lab staff members provide guidance for product-process interactions.
- New high-precision sample coater capable of producing sheet size samples up to three feet long via slot die and other coating techniques with as little as 100 ml of solution. The sample coater can create prototype samples earlier in the development process with less material and processing cost than pilot coating.
- Additional testing capability around adhesion and MVTR (Moisture Vapor Transmission Rate) to enable specialized MVTR constructions for protecting highly sensitive products such as pharmaceutical and electronics packaging.
- Enhanced flow visualization equipment and software in pilot scale coating operations to make product scale-up quicker and more cost efficient.
- Upgraded project management and gating processes that help customers identify opportunities to improve development and shorten scale-up times.
"We are committed to extending our precision roll-to-roll coating expertise to our valued advanced technology customers and we are always exploring new ways to improve how we operate," said Rick Daniels,
General Manager of Carestream Tollcoating. "In 2014, we invested in several strategic resources and technical upgrades that will help our customers reduce product development costs and decrease time to market. We will continue along this path and broaden our reach to additional new markets in 2015 and beyond."
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Background on Carestream Tollcoating
Carestream Tollcoating offers precision contract coating services, specializing in the application of aqueous and solvent coatings on flexible substrates for a wide range of industrial, medical, electronic and other advanced materials applications. Carestream Tollcoating’s engineers and material scientists build on more than 100 years of coating leadership to deliver problem-solving expertise in precision coating applications, including fluid design and preparation. State-of-the-art pilot coaters also make Carestream Tollcoating an ideal partner for product development and very fast scale-up to large volume. For additional information, please visit www.tollcoating.com.