Principles of Rubber Technology
This course will provide a firm understanding of the essential principles of rubber and will explain its remarkable behavior. During the course, the relationship between science and engineering will be made clear. The course will explore, in detail, the principles of engineered rubber behavior and rubber chemistry. These scientific principles will be applied to the fabrication of molded rubber articles during the creation of a rubber composition suitable for a specific function.
Through this course, you’ll attain an advanced knowledge of applied rubber science, increasing customer confidence and bringing a competitive advantage to your organization.
This course can be applied to the Elastomer Technology Certificate.
Who Should Attend
Professionals dealing with the principles of applied rubber who are in the areas of marketing, sales, design engineering, compounding, process development or quality control of rubber articles
Benefits and Learning Outcomes
- Understand why rubber behaves as it does
- Exhibit knowledge of rubber recovery science and why it matters
- Recognize why rubber is used as an engineering material
- Explain the difference between different rubber polymers and what makes them unique
- Apply knowledge to design a rubber compound for a specific function
- Demonstrate the essential design review details for rubber molds
- Break down the process of choosing the best mixing method for rubber compounds
- Formulate opinions on why specific tests should be conducted to measure consistency in rubber batches
- Analyze the differences in rubber molding methods and justify the choice of one over another
- Develop a rubber molding process that ensures consistent performance from cavity-to-cavity and shot-to-shot
- Create a comprehensive rubber specification based on scientific principles.
- Evaluate the importance of rubber bonding and its connection to surface science
Course Outline/Topics
The course will consist of the following:
- Essentials of polymer science
- Using polymer science to explain and predict rubber-media interactions (compatibility)
- Rubber crosslinking (curing/vulcanization) and importance of selection of crosslink type
- Engineering characteristics of rubber
- Differences between rubber and plastics
- Differences between natural rubber, bio-based rubber and synthetic rubber
- How rubber is classified
- Choosing the rubber polymer: Why choose one over the other?
- Designing with rubber: Precepts of “Form-Fit-Function-Safety”
- Essentials of rubber tooling design, taking into account the fundamentals of rubber science
- Essentials of creating the rubber compound: choosing the ingredients and their significance
- Mixing technology with the focus on mix consistency: mixer types and method development
- Testing and evaluating the mixed rubber compound: testing what matters vs. what’s easy
- Science-based rubber molding
- Types of rubber molding
- Ensuring the consistency of rubber article behavior
- Rubber insert molding: steel, aluminum, plastic and their surface preparations
- Auditing your processes: traceability
Dates and locations to be announced.
