Things run smoothly with elastomers! 

They are less fancy than design elements made of ther­mo­plastic or ther­moset plastic, but without them things just don't run smoothly. Elast­omers: elastic, dimen­sion­ally stable, extremely resistant to aging, temper­ature, pres­sure and chem­icals, mostly black and often used in a variety of ways behind the scenes - but tech­nic­ally no less demanding!

The modern palette of mater­ials is unima­gin­able without elast­omers. This is also shown by rubber's long history of success. In 1852 Charles Goodyear invented hard rubber cross­linked with sulfur, which expanded the range of applic­a­tions many times over.

That is still true today. The devel­op­ment and applic­a­tion possib­il­ities have increased enorm­ously, not least due to synthetic rubber poly­mers and addit­ives.

It is there­fore a matter of course for L. Brügge­mann GmbH & Co KG, a medium-sized chem­ical company, to offer high quality, tailor-made addit­ives in the field of ther­mo­plastics, along with highly exper­i­enced, tech­nic­ally competent resource people who are on a par with any in the field of elast­omers.

In 2014, with the opening of the tech­nical center for elast­omers as part of the applic­a­tion tech­no­logy, Brügge­mann added the capab­ility to create direct link­ages to our clients and the devel­op­ment of targeted solu­tions for customers on a small scale.

Two mixing units are at the heart of the elast­omer tech­nical center: an internal mixer and the rolling mill. A vulcan­iz­a­tion press is avail­able for the cross­linking process. The compounds and vulcan­iz­ates are also tested in-house. A large number of test devices have been set up to determine the processing, vulcan­iz­a­tion and usage prop­er­ties of elast­omers, but chem­ical analyzes are also an integral part.

As a manu­fac­turer of high-quality zinc deriv­at­ives, which are of crit­ical import­ance for the cross­linking reac­tion of elast­omers, extensive tech­nical know-how has been built up here in recent years.

Many innov­ative products have already been created, tested and brought to our customers by our devel­op­ment team:

  • Active zinc deriv­at­ives with a low heavy metal content
  • Cost-optim­ized, reac­tion-accel­er­ating zinc activ­ators (PRO series)
  • Low-dust, easily and quickly processed, pre-dispersed zinc master­batches
  • Systems to improve the adhe­sion of rubber matrix to metal compon­ents

Whether it is recipe optim­iz­a­tion through material exchange, cost optim­iz­a­tion, improve­ment of processing prop­er­ties, or envir­on­mental stand­ards, the elast­omer tech­nical center develops fast, targeted solu­tions, thus making its contri­bu­tion to the overall port­folio of Brügge­mann.

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