MFGCON – The Seventh Annual North Carolina Manufacturing Conference
May 18-19, 2022 | Durham Convention Center As a partner of the North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership, we’re excited to see the 2022 Manufacturing Conference, MFGCON 22, being held in Durham, NC. Moving into its seventh year, North Carolina’s premier manufacturing conference will be held May 18-19, 2022. The [...]
The Polymers Center Assists Customers in Reverse Engineering Efforts
Plastics manufacturers routinely need solutions to material challenges, such as why a new lot of material is failing or how to identify the properties of a polymer. The Polymers Center offers a wide variety of tests to assist manufacturers in finding answers. Lately, our most frequent requests have been for [...]
2D Polymers – Strong But Feather Light
Engineers have created a revolutionary type of polymer, called 2DPA-1, that promises greater strength then ever before while remaining remarkably light weight. Typically, polymers (which include all plastics), consist of chains of building blocks called monomers. These one-dimensional chains grow by adding new molecules onto their ends. The new two-dimensional [...]
New Elastomer Material Produces Super-Soft Objects That Can Be Used In The Human Body
The softness of a material is measured in terms of how easily it stretches and bends. Most elastomers generally have a high modulus, meaning they stretch and smash down very little. A low modulus would mean the material is very stretchy and soft. Conventional elastomers are stiffer and less stretchy [...]
Environment-Controlled Pods Developed For Food Production And More
Scientists in France have developed a prototype of a group of dome-like structures, or pods that can maintain specific climate conditions within the pod no matter what the conditions are outside of the pod. In other words, one of these pods can be set to maintain conditions optimal for growing [...]
New Polymer Aerogel Extracts Drinkable Water From Air
Everybody knows that the earth’s atmosphere is full of water. However, it has not been successfully tapped as a source of drinkable water. Although the earth will never run out of water, drinkable water is not always available to all people where and when they need it. In fact, more [...]