Electrochemicals Blog – EPI – Electrochemical Products Inc.

November 12th, 2007

 By Eric Olander

 Last week I spoke as an expert on a live webcast sponsored by Chem.info and Tectura on lot traceability using our ERP/MRP system for system recall on raw materials for chemical products. EPi recently switched to Microsoft's Navision software process this March. One of the great benefits is the lot traceability feature that allows EPi to make a product recall happen in a matter of minutes vs. hours or days of a manual system. The new system through bar-coding allows no more manual entry eliminating input errors. With this new system we can type a raw material lot number and learn what EPi products it was used in and who received those products in a timely fashion so that if we had to issue a recall we could do this very quickly instead of having to dig through piles of paper.

Another experience I want to share with you is what it took to go through the experience of doing a live web cast, which technically is a TV show on the internet; this was a live show so we all had a case of the butterflies before we did this. Lisa Arrigo from Chem.info did a great job as the moderator with that great smile, Joe Ackerman from Somca organization was our technical expert with all of his experience, and Lori Pauly was the Tectura expert. A few weeks prior, we had a practice run on a teleconference call. We all got together for a wonderful dinner the night before. Then the next morning we hit the studio at Interface Media Group. It was intersting company from the fact it does DC talk shows (we saw a lot of the sets), political ads and Presidents. It also had shot the picture for Hillary Clinton's latest book and recently completed a PBS special on Armageddon. I turned orange. For the first time in my life I had makeup put on my face. Our make up specialist who I can not remember his name has done all of the Presidents since Carter and does Hollywood stars like Jodie Foster and Arnold Schwarzenegger . We did a practice run in a conference room, then did a practice on the actual set. You know that set looks like an expensive piece of wood, but it was only plastic laminate. There were three cameras on us, a control room, director and a crew of about 5 other camera people and set people. After the practice run we had lunch and had our makeup put on which for the guys took about 10 minutes and for the ladies 20-30 minutes. The live teleconference started at 2PM eastern time, so we had to be ready by 1:30 for make up, touch up, and sound checks.

We started on time and it went well. I was the last presenter, but before it was my turn there was a technical problem with the screen  above the camera that contained our outline of what we were talking about during Lori's presentation. She fortunately had her notes, but I did not. So I was starting to get concerned, especially on live TV, but the excellent crew came to the rescue and my notes were located above the TV camera as planned. After the presentation we took questions from the people viewing the web cast. In all this took about one hour to do. I tell you there is  lot of work that goes into doing this and my hats of to the Interface Media Group. This is a once in a life opportunity to do this and I want to say thanks to Tectura, Chem.info, and Microsoft giving me this opportunity.

Posted in Eric Olander Happenings | No Comments »

November 12th, 2007

The latest Plating Surface Finishing magazine has an article by Tom Rochester that states that trivalent chromates under salt spray testing result in hexavalent chrome when using the diphenyl carbizide indicator test. We at EPi tried this on panels that had been salt sprayed at Technimet and are initial analysis supports Tom's claim. One thing we did not do and I wonder about other testing labs and metal finishers. Do they certify that the salt spray cabinet has no hexavalent chrome in that cabinet while they are doing salt spray of trivalent chromates? I remember one time we were doing testing on a trivalent chromate and we put some panels in and my Chemist Mark Kulas informed me that we had an unusual failure after 24 hours. I went over with him and in the cabinet was pressure treated wood with different fasteners lodged into the wood. The wood preservtative leaches out during the test and was the root cause of the failure. Where am I going? Make sure you document what other coatings are in the salt spray cabinet when you do testing. The labs love to throw a bunch of different parts to maximize there profits. Therefore, what EPi is doing is performing tests in cabinets that have been certified not to contain hex chrome and no other parts are in the cabinet during the test. We will be doing testing in a salt spray cabinet and a humidity chamber. Hey here is another interesting fact. Technimet recently expanded to new facilities and they had to move the cabinets. During the moving process they had to take out the cooling water that helps keep the temperature constant.  The problem was that cooling water had hexavalent chrome as a corrosion inhibitor. Could cooling water some how leach into the cabinet?

Posted in Trivalent Chromates | No Comments »