By Clifford K. Schoff, Schoff Associates
This issue of CoatingsTech includes an interesting article by Cynthia Challener on the current state of R&D in our industry. Reading it made me think about my experiences in R&D and how the work and its focus changed over the years. After spending several years doing relatively applied academic research on polymers, I began my career in coatings R&D in 1974 at PPG. Then as now, the aim of R&D was to develop new coatings that met customer needs or even anticipated them, although a great deal of time and effort was spent on technical support. The glass and chemical parts of the company could never understand why we did so much problem solving for our customers and products. They would tell us, “When we deliver something, that usually is the last we hear of it. What is wrong with you guys?” Some of you may get a chuckle out of that, especially if your company has a team of service people for customer plants and you still must work on a lot of problems that they cannot solve.
I began in the Physical Chemistry Group, which did both research and problem solving. Much of the research grew out of problems, but we had a lot of freedom regarding what we worked on and how long we could keep working on it. I doubt whether many groups or organizations have those luxuries now. We discovered a lot of things that would not have come to light working to a timetable. However, over time, the emphasis became more on problem solving.
In 1974, the coatings industry was just discovering computers, and many senior managers thought of them as toys. When I first started, we had to dial in to a computer that we shared with other companies. For a time, that was sufficient to handle our data analysis and modeling needs, but, eventually we bought a main frame computer of our own. Of course, now everyone in R&D has her or his own computer with incredible computational power and memory by 1974 standards. Young people have computer skills far surpassing those of old geezers like me.
Forty years ago, there were far fewer concerns about laboratory and product health and safety. In most labs, people still poured leftover paints and solvents down the drains. With time, lab people became concerned about their own safety and health and the effects of their actions on others. We began regular safety inspections in our labs. DuPont was a champion of laboratory safety and taught other companies (including us) how to improve in this area. I think that safety has become engrained in virtually all R&D cultures.
By 1974, Rule 66 was in force, the Clean Air Act had been passed, and the EPA had been created. There still were many products that contained high solvent levels and toxic materials, but it was clear that both needed to be reduced. Waterborne technology, long used for architectural coatings, became the new great hope for industrial coatings. When this proved not to work for all product areas, high solids became popular. The Clean Act Amendments of 1977 with the introduction of VOC restrictions pushed everyone to greater efforts to develop effective lower solvent products. Since then, VOC limits have been driven down, and Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) became regulated. I do not have proof, but it appears to me that, with every new regulation, large paint companies increase market share and life for smaller companies becomes much more difficult.
In my early days in R&D, I asked about visiting customers to see how paint was applied, what sorts of problems occurred, etc. The horrified response was, “No, the customer would think that something really bad was happening if a research person showed up.” Eventually, this short-sighted view was overcome, and many companies now consider customer visits and interactions to be part of the education of R&D people.
When I started to work in the paint industry, I doubt whether anyone had heard of sustainability. I certainly had not. Now, sustainability is a major driver for business, product development, and manufacturing strategies. It includes economic, environmental, and social aspects. R&D people are being pulled into many facets of sustainability, particularly formulation for lower solvent emissions, removal of HAPs, use of more renewable and lower cost materials, longer service life, higher efficiency lower energy manufacturing and lower energy cure. Additional duties include identifying key failure modes in specific coatings, developing ways of making meaningful service life predictions and carrying out life cycle assessments.
Finally, analytical instrumentation and methods are more widespread and powerful than those used years ago. I remember when our Analytical Group depended mainly on wet chemistry and a person who was a genius at interpreting the results. Unfortunately, instrumentation and understanding related to testing in the formulating labs has not kept pace with those in Analytical. For example, we still do not have adequate dry or wet adhesion tests. We have several hardness tests, but they are based on different principles and do not predict end-use properties. Very little has been done to relate physical and mechanical properties to coatings performance. A lot more work is necessary in the testing area.