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Thursday, 29 May 2008

Fantasia: A parade of color! - New coloring process for plastics

Fantasia enables them to offer plastic parts in a previously unavailable array of colors
Going shopping with Fulvio Caon can certainly fuel the imagination. The marketing expert at Bayer MaterialScience is standing in front of a telephone display at a major electronics stores: black, gray and silver dominate the scene, with only an occasional splash of color here and there. Caon picks up a dark-gray device: answering machine, address book, outstanding technical specifications. “But what if red is your favorite color and not gray or silver?” asks the Italian. “Wouldn’t you rather buy this telephone in red? And the same device for your children maybe in green? With Fantasia, you may soon be able to do just that.”
What Caon means with Fantasia is not merely the ability to visualize plastic products in every conceivable color in his mind’s eye. The name refers to an entire palette of interesting coloring technologies that Bayer is currently introducing to the design studios of plastics manufacturers in the United States, Europe and soon also the entire world.
Gray is the lowest common denominator, “because coloring plastics wasn’t so easy in the past,” explains Caon. “While plastic parts can theoretically be produced in all conceivable color shades and with wonderful effects using precolored plastic granules, the use of colored granules only pays off if your manufacturing output is high-volume.”
That’s why we get the impression that the rainbow of many product designers only ranges from black, to sepia, to white. Now we know they’re not colorblind after all. Rather, economic considerations have previously forced them to choose the lowest common denominator, and that usually happens to be gray. “Moreover, the most innovative design ideas, which may not have immediate access to a large market, fall by the wayside early on due to the complex processing technology,” adds Caon.
However, automotive manufacturers, for example, are always looking for new ways to brighten things up around the steering wheel in their limited edition cars. Similarly, household appliance makers would love to let us choose between strawberry red, peach orange and banana yellow when buying their hand blenders and microwave ovens. They were simply thwarted by the fact that it just isn’t worthwhile to manufacture small product volumes with the classic, precolored granules.
Help is now on its way for frustrated color fans – with Fantasia. The coloring methods that Caon’s colleagues at Bayer MaterialScience in the United States have whipped up may finally free designers from these restrictions in creativity and color selection: Fantasia offers not only precolored plastic granules, but also a whole line of technologies that breathe new life into standard plastics, complementing one another perfectly and, on top of it all, greatly expanding a designer’s artistic freedom.
Help is now on its way for frustrated color fans – with Fantasia. The coloring methods that Caon’s colleagues at Bayer MaterialScience in the United States have whipped up may finally free designers from these restrictions in creativity and color selection: Fantasia offers not only precolored plastic granules, but also a whole line of technologies that breathe new life into standard plastics, complementing one another perfectly and, on top of it all, greatly expanding a designer’s artistic freedom. 


For more information visit Bayer MaterialScience