Course: Sponge Rubber 101
April 1 @ 9:00 am - 4:00 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 those who currently make flexible cellular elastomer products and wish to expand their knowledge or students wanting to gain insights into these materials and how they can be used. This course will offer an overview of cellular material’s terminology, potential applications, economics, specifications, raw materials and compound construction. Additionally, there will be a review of the various processes used to produce cellular elastomer products, including mixing, various types of extrusion and molding.
This discussion will offer helpful tips, the dos and the don’ts of producing cellular elastomer products that can be applied by the participants in real world applications of their own. The course will not contain content about cellular thermoplastic rubber or foamed products. The course will include opportunities for questions and answers and samples of cellular products will be available for hands on examination.
“The Sponge Rubber 101 course helped me gain an understanding of compounding to manufacturing of open cell elastomers for downhole tool applications. The instructor showed extensive experience and solid knowledge on this topic. I really benefitted from this course!” – Xiaohong Ren
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.