That was the key message delivered by George Goodwin of Elementis Specialties, one of the featured speakers at a recent coatings symposium sponsored by the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Societies for Coatings Technology. The two-day symposium, held at the Airport Marriott Hotel in Cleveland, featured a wide-ranging technical program and a half-day New Product Showcase in which more than 50 coatings-industry suppliers participated with exhibits on raw materials, equipment and services. The symposium and show drew approximately 200 attendees.

Goodwin, decked out in an apron and wielding a canoe paddle as a prop designed to capture the attention of his audience, said personnel involved in coatings production can lose sight of fundamental procedures that can make or break a batch. Goodwin provided a lively review of “Practical Paint Making.”

Some of Goodwin’s “back to basics” suggestions included:

• Writing batch tickets that include the correct order of addition, premix instructions, milling instructions and other details in an easy-to-follow “cookbook” style.

• “Pre-staging” a batch by gathering all the raw materials ahead of time.

• Guiding the batch-maker through a new-product batch, and perhaps first processing the batch in a lab quantity.

Other topics addressed during the symposium’s technical program were new waterborne thickeners; pigment-control techniques; PVdC copolymer latexes in metal coatings; the use of universal pigment concentrates; formulation of high-gloss, waterborne enamels; regulations on VOCs; crosslinking polyurethane dispersions; and waterborne crosslinkable coatings. R. Edward Bish, Jamestown Paint Co., was presented the symposium’s best-paper award for “Electrocoating and Regulations: The Dynamic Dual.”

Serving as symposium co-chairs were Vicki Fisher, Jamestown Paint Co., and Rick Shannon, Beaver Paint Co.