EQUIPMENT
/ NEW
AND NO NAILS …
A NEW VARNISH WILL ALWAYS GLITTER, GLITTER EVERYWHERE
Auto enamel should be shiny, beautiful, resistant to external climatic and, if possible, hooligan influences. Alas, the last requirement has not yet been realized. However, the three employees of Degussa in Düsseldorf - Björn Borup, Roland Edelmann and Yaroslav Monkevich - seem to have found a solution.
Like all ingenious, the recipe for a new paint turned out to be simple - they mixed in it … sand. Not the same, of course, as on the beach, and not even the same as in the hourglass - the particles of silicon oxide should be no more than a few nanometers (1 nm is a thousandth of a micron). The success of the venture was so impressive that the inventors received an award from the concern's management - 25, 000 euros.
Generally speaking, the high hardness of grains of sand has long been known, and it is not in vain that any deposits and coatings are removed by sandblasting. The idea literally lay on the surface. However, the addition of powder increased the viscosity of the paint so much that it became impossible to apply it. I had to - and this is the essence of the discovery - to "wrap" each microsand in a polysiloxane shell, which has become the connecting link between the organic and inorganic components of the new varnish. In the near future, the coating should be tested in a climate chamber. If the “sand” paint shows equally good anti-corrosion properties, motorists will no longer be afraid of the nail of an envious neighbor.