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18 May 2008

Why is the PDA.C02 system superior to the classical methods?

The drawbacks of the classical methods for investigating paper and board in quality assurance and product development have primarily to do with the following factors that may occur individually or all together:

  1. It is not possible to make measurements in the extremely short time range so that it is impossible to make any statements on the sample surface area.
  2. It is not possible to use some testing liquids relevant to practice.
  3. The contact conditions are never close-to-reality.

With the PDA.C 02 system, all of these disadvantages are avoided:

  1. Measurement from the time point of liquid contact with a minimum dead time of 6 ms.
  2. Almost all testing liquids can be used.
  3. It is possible to specify close-to-reality conditions such as pressure and high shear impulse or adjustable temperature.

The "PDA.C 02 PenetrationDynamicsAnalyzer" was conceived as a modular system consisting of one basic device plus several modules that are tailor-made for the special needs of the various applications. There are the necessary accessories, user-friendly software, and complete measuring technologies, each of which of consists of a measuring device, the accessories and evaluation algorithms.

In addition, the low-cost EST device is available for quality assurance, operated with or without a personal computer.

This system of devices may be applied wherever there it is a need for gaining information about papers or liquids or about real processes such as glueing, printing, coating and impregnating for the purposes of R & D or quality assurance by investigating the interaction of liquid to paper/board.

If identical testing liquids (such as water, ink, coating colors, acid) are used on identical substrates (such as paper, micropore filters), there are certain correlations to classical measuring devices and techniques such the Cobb, HST, Bristow wheel and Contact Angle Test, wet expansion measurement according to Fenchel, the SD Warren Test, the Abo/Eklund method and various more recent techniques for water retention measurements of coating colors.

Since most of these classical techniques require extended measuring times and do not work under industrial conditions, it is practically impossible to gain information on real interaction, especially in the short-term range or surface area.

A special characteristic of the PDA.C 02 is the fact that it measures immediately after liquid contact, i.e. after a dead time of only 6 ms! This means that it provides information about the surface area of the paper/board that is generally the most interesting. This ensures a high degree of efficiency for your investigations since the measurements supply significant process-related information before the material is printed, glued, coated or impregnated.