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Apollo and Q-Lab throw some light on Weathering!

Apollo Scientific, a recognized leader in the supply, service and after market support of quality, precision laboratory and scientific equipment throughout Southern Africa, was fortunate enough to have Mr. Jeffrey Quill, Director of Technical Applications directly from Q-Lab Corporation, USA.

Q-Lab Corporation is a global provider of material durability testing products since 1956. They design and manufacture standard test substrates as well as weathering, light stability, and corrosion testers. Q-Lab Weathering Research Service, a division of Q-Lab Corporation, has locations in southern Florida and the Arizona desert. When it comes to Weathering, Q-Lab are definitely ranked as one of the leaders in the market with many years of experience running their own contract test services which includes laboratory simulations and outdoor exposures for weathering, lightfastness and corrosion testing.

Although the trip was only a week, Mr. Quill managed to share his knowledge with almost 100 eager Apollo customers. The week involved QUV Essentials Courses done onsite at BASF (Johannesburg) and Spunchem (Durban), as well as a QUV Essentials Course done at the Apollo Scientific Head Office, for various existing QUV users. Based in the Kyalami Business Park, our Head Office overlooks the Kyalami Racetrack, which thrilled some of the gentlemen during the lunch break in our entertainment area overlooking the BMW skidpan! The course not only covered function, operation, safety and maintenance of the QUV, it also included a brief introduction to both outdoor and accelerated weathering techniques, to help customers better understand the QUV Accelerated Weathering Testers which they currently use.

An Automotive Weathering Seminar was then held in Port Elizabeth at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, with special thanks going to the Automotive Components Technology Station (ACTS). This was followed a few days later with an Automotive Weathering Seminar at Toyota Manufacturing Plant in Durban.

The seminars covered such topics as, the "Forces of Weathering" and "Outdoor Weathering", to specific papers on "Accelerated Weathering Instrument Correlation Study" (Chrysler, BASF, Q-Lab paper), "Acid Etch Testing of Automotive Clear Coats" (BASF, Q-Lab paper) and "Understanding Moisture in Accelerated Weathering, Steps to a New Accelerated Test" (Ford, Bayer, BASF, Q-Lab paper).

Attendees all enjoyed the seminar, and were especially impressed with the technical capabilities and years of experience Jeff shared with them.

We would once again like to express our sincere thanks to Jeffrey Quill for taking the time to share his immense knowledge with us, and to all the attendees for taking the time out of their busy schedules to enjoy the week with us.

For more information on the presentations, or for details on future seminars, please do not hesitate to contact Apollo Scientific at info@apollosci.co.za