Course: An Introduction to Continuous Vulcanization
May 7, 2025 @ 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
CEUs: 0.66 (To receive the CEUs, attendees must attend the course live and promptly complete the survey evaluation after the course.)
Location: This course is available virtually only. It can be taken from the comfort of your home or office – remotely from any tablet, laptop or computer.
Course Overview: This course was developed for rubber industry employees who currently use Continuous Vulcanization (CV) processes and wish to expand their knowledge or those who wish to gain insights into these processes and how they can be used.
This course will offer an overview of the variety of commercially viable Continuous Vulcanization processes and their strengths and weaknesses. Following that, it will take the participants into a more in-depth study of the three most common forms of CV, Liquid Curing Media (LCM), better known as the Salt Bath process, Hot Air Vulcanization (HAV) and Microwave/Hot Air Vulcanization. The emphasis will be on practical knowledge that can be utilized in production along with safety concerns that always need to be addressed.
We will begin by looking at the common elements to all three processes, namely the extruder and its auxiliary components, plus downstream equipment for cooling and pulling. The course then will look at each of the three CV processes individually giving useful ideas for process improvements that the participants can apply in their own manufacturing. The course will conclude with a brief look at rubber compound development for these CV processes and will conclude with a question and answer session. There will be samples of products made using CV processes available for examination.
Price: $595 Member / $745 Non-members / Free for Undergraduate Student Members / $100 Other Student Members
Instructor: Richard D. Strong, President, Elastomeric Consulting Services LLC
Bio: Mr. Strong is currently President and CEO of Elastomeric Consulting Services. He is a 1971 graduate of the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth where he received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and was awarded the Fred E. Busby award for outstanding work in Chemistry.
He has over 48 years of experience in various aspects of rubber technology. He has served a Chief Technical Officer for over 30 years of his career. His background includes, raw material selection and approval, compound design, processing and testing with most organic elastomers and silicone including cellular rubber. He has broad expertise in process development, documentation, control and troubleshooting. Finally, he has extensive experience in testing and data analysis of rubber compounds.
His consulting business has been conducted both domestically and internationally. It includes developing and presenting educational programs for individual companies and for organizations and colleges and universities. He also does hands on work with production companies to achieve improvements in their compounds and production processes. He works with raw material suppliers to teach them how their products might be used in the rubber industry.
In March 2019, his book Sponge Rubber, An Introduction to Cellular Rubber was published by TechnoBiz as a companion reference for the course he also presents of the same name for the ACS Rubber Division and Akron Polymer Technical Services. He has also developed and presents a second course entitled An Introduction to Continuous Vulcanization, for them. He is currently developing a third course on Rubber Extrusion Technology for the ACS Rubber Division which will be available later this year.
Mr. Strong is married (Roberta) and resides in Northeast Ohio. He has a daughter and a stepson and stepdaughter plus three grandchildren. In his spare time, he enjoys vacationing in Florida or on Cape Cod, working outdoor, and fostering senior rescue basset hounds.