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If you were walking around Q-Lab’s headquarters or any of our global locations, it wouldn’t take long to hear someone — sales professionals, product engineers, help desk technicians, marketing application specialists, upper management, etc. — mention...

A new and potentially revolutionary weathering standard has been published by ASTM International. Titled ‘Xenon Arc Exposure Test with Enhanced Light and Water Exposure for Transportation Coatings’, ASTM D7869 is the result of a decade of research by...

Q-Lab offers a new method of performing accelerated weathering tests on coatings that promises better and faster laboratory results.Download File

When coatings degrade from UV exposure, they can become more susceptible to corrosion attack. In the early 1990s, ISO and ASTM standardized a combined corrosion/weathering cycle. Today, this is still considered the most effective test method for dete...

The QUV®/cw photostability tester provides a standard cool white fluorescent test chamber that meets ANSI, ASTM and ISO test methods for indoor photostability testing.Many products intended for home, office, and commercial environments have never bee...

For many applications it is important to measure how well plastics parts resist degradation and colour change when exposed to temperature changes, moisture, and light – especially ultraviolet (UV) light. Examples include building materials, automotiv...

Understanding how to best protect a plastic part from the effects of weathering needs to include an analysis of several important factors. It should take account of the polymer type, colour and additives. An estimation of what the actual exposure wil...

The basic stresses in weathering are known and quantified. The time a material is stressed and the temperature during UV and water stresses are the primary variables in natural weathering. Reproducing them exactly in the laboratory can provide accele...

Continual demands from consumers for highly durable coatings with excellent appearance motivate automotive manufactures and paint suppliers to introduce new coating systems into the marketplace to meet those demands. However, because of the potential...

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has recently approved two new performance-based weathering test methods to replace the older hardware based methods. The new methods describe the exposure conditions and control tolerances rather than describ...