Seminar "Production of Rubber Compounds"

"Whoever never made a mistake has never tried anything new." (Albert Einstein)

From 10th to 12th May 2017, the 49 participants from 8 countries had the opportunity to participate in the 19th mixing seminar of the DIK (Deutsches Institut für Kautschuktechnologie eV) and DKG (Deutsche Kautschuk-Gesellschaft eV) organized in cooperation with Harburg-Freudenberger Maschinenbau GmbH (HF) and to "try something new".

The expert knowledge given during the course in various lectures could also be applied straightaway to the mixing trials carried out in the HF-Technical Center. In their attempts to "try something new", the participants were actively encouraged by the HF employees.

Three German and three international groups had to face their challengers in a mixed competition in each of three trials on two different laboratory mixers (tangential mixer GK 4N and intermeshing mixer GK 5E). The goal was to produce a high-quality mixture in the shortest possible time. The results were  evaluated by the company MonTech, which had taken over the testing of the mixing results with their material testing machines.

After having learned the theory,  the participants had the opportunity to improve their recipe by means of the analysis results and the measurement data recorded on the mixer for the next mixing experiment.

Information on the DIK can be found here: www.dik-kautschuk.de