Everwide Newsletter No.323

Although "Flame" has brought a major change in human behavior, its harm cannot be ignored. Nowadays, plastic materials are widely used. Traditionally, flame retardants are often added into the formulation to make the material flame retardant. However, for fiberglass cloth, if you want to use resin to change its physical properties and be flame retardant, it is more difficult through traditional methods. Recently, our company has developed a resin which can improve the flexibility of fiberglass cloth and has flame retardant effect. Furthermore, it is processed in a special way and then tested, and it also passes UL94 V-0 (Figure 1). Even if the appearance of the resin is milky white, the fiberglass cloth after treatment will not affect it (Figure 2). Besides flame retardancy, plastic materials will produce "toxic fumes" after burning (Figure 3), therefore the international specifications of ISO 5659 and ASTM E662 are established. For smoke of CO, CO₂, HCN, HF, HBr, and SO₂ produced by the combustion of non-metallic materials, use NBS smoke test machine to test smoke concentration. Recently, we are devoted to the research of suppressing toxic smoke. After initial test, it can pass ISO UL94 V-0 and will not produce lots of smoke (Figure 4, 5). At present, we still conduct many relevant experiments.

─Author: Yi-Jung, Tsou

Our products must be adjusted according to customer needs, so there are more than 2,000 kinds of raw materials. It is not easy for such a large number of raw materials to be neat and orderly, so sometimes it will inevitably mess up (Figure 1). Thus, we clearly mark the codes of raw materials at the entrance, so that employees can find it within five minutes (Figure 2). In order to prevent the raw materials from being polluted by impurities and affecting the quality, or leaking and polluting the environment, the opened bags of raw materials are clamped with clips or placed in anti-fouling boxes for storage. Having said that, it is not difficult to improve the activity itself, the difficulty is how to maintain the results. Therefore, factory has colleagues to take turns on a daily basis to check the preservation status of the raw materials in order to maintain good improvement results (Figure 3).

Amines curing agents and anhydrides curing agents are most commonly used for epoxy. Amines include basic polyamines, addends of polyamines with resins, polyamides reacted with vegetable oleic acid, modified amines performed Mannish reaction with phenol and formaldehyde, and products obtained by various modification methods. As long as the primary or secondary amine is used to cross-link the epoxy, they all belong to amine curing agents. Amine curing agents have low reaction temperature, and many can be cured at room temperature, but have uniquely ammonia odor. Adhesives, floor paints, small-mass potting materials, composite materials, etc., are likely to use amine curing agents. Amine curing agents are mostly made from fatty amines, but some aromatic amines have slowly faded out of the market due to toxicity.

Busy bees, a cluster of dogs, delicious vegetables, amazingly delicious chickens and ducks, and sweet fruits. My home is full of different forms of lives, making my life full of energy. My dad started his next 30-year plan after retiring from more than 30 years of police work. He tried the "Aquaponics", but failed; dad once thought about "selling street foods", but after many researches and developments, he didn't reach his ideal. And then, he decided to make coffee on the 139 County Road in Changhua every Saturday and brew coffee for his car friends; finally, he entered the beekeeping industry. There are many things to learn, such as understanding bee habits, tools, source of bee colony, feeding, harvesting, disease prevention, etc. After several years of hard work and experience accumulation, he currently has about 70 to 80 boxes of beehives. Besides, spring is a good time to collect honey and it is also a time to check and accept the hard work of the past year. But no matter how much the output is, Dad’s spirit of not giving up is enough to make me admire. Especially after I had experienced "One Day Beekeeper", I realized it is not easy at all. Every drop of honey is hard to come by, so let's support local agriculture in Taiwan.

─Author: Man-Yun, Chiu