Fully service-oriented

With its highly competitive product range, Ticona is a leading global supplier of engineering polymers. But just to be a raw material supplier is not enough for the Kelsterbach specialists. Proximity to customers and customer benefit take absolute priority for Ticona in all aspects of application development and product maintenance. In addition to the ability to recognize and analyze market trends at an early stage, technical competence and system expertise are essential for this.

Many different specialists, including plastics technologists, engineers and laboratory technicians, work in Ticona's "Technology & Service" department. Their dual aim is to make a key contribution to customer success by providing an efficient technical service and to develop technical solutions that help implement innovative concepts.

Service provider with very high quality standards

"Technology & Service" is a much sought-after team for industry. The department provides efficient services for customers, responding rapidly and competently to customer needs. Among other services, the engineers and technologists make design recommendations, offer advice on mold construction, answer questions on material selection and optimize processing of Ticona plastics at the customer's plant. The range of services does not stop there, however. The Polymer Testing unit performs a full testing program from small-scale laboratory tests to physico-mechanical tests.

The team in the Plastics Technical Center investigates new processing technologies together with the technology and material experts – everything from material combinations to special injection molding processes. In addition, the technologists and engineers undertake mold trials in collaboration with customers to optimize the processing parameters for the production of a specific component. The team can also test different product grades for an application or carry out pre-production runs for customers. CAE-assisted design optimization and a technical hotline complete the service package.

Ticona secures competitive advantages

Since the early 1980s, interest has centered primarily on the development of special processes to produce more "sophisticated" molded parts. Examples include the water- and gas-assist processes, multicomponent injection molding (hard-soft, MID) and laser welding of plastics.

A process that is still relatively new is microcellular foaming or MuCell technology, which among other advantages permits faster cycles and therefore cuts production costs. Ticona obtained a license for the MuCell process and in August 2001 commissioned a pilot plant in Kelsterbach to become the first global supplier of material produced by this technology. Ticona shares the know-how acquired from pilot-plant operation with customers to facilitate cost-efficient implementation of new projects.