GFX: Building Science
GFX: Hosted by Adam Grubb
GFX: Part 3: the innovation of Color
Adam:
This is the building science of Valspar Coil and Extrusion. The global reach of products and solution begins in a lab, makes a stop on a test fence and then finishes its journey on facade of a building. What is the science and technology that gave Kameleon, a spectrum of intense vibrant tones that appear to shift when viewed from different angles or changing light. Or Nova, announced last year and using a proprietary application process that delivers dynamic colors, pastels and the always challenging white. And with the latest line Rustica, being brought to market this year, it appears as if color scientists are just getting started.
GFX: Nancy Peden Senior Project Chemist
Nancy:
My life is color. My life is special effects. My life as making paint look cool, make it fun and make it attractive.
Jeff:
Our chemists, all the lab people, all our development people,
GFX: Jeff Alexander Vice Predsident of Sales North American Coil & Extrusion
they know that what is going to differentiate Valspar is innovation and that's where we've been focused.
Nancy:
When you think of red, yellow, blue, green, that's not the limit of color. There is like infinite number of colors.
Adam:
These panels here are all very, these are special pigments and the other elements.
GFX: Channing Beaudry Technical Director, Coil & Extrusion
Channing:
These are a lot of prints. PVDF prints and you can see where we're trying to copy the look of wood grain. Anything from granite to stone look. This is something again, that's another very big trend in the industry where metals are a great material to work with. But it doesn't have the same look of everything else right. So the question comes to Valspar as Man, if we could only make this metal building look like it's stone. Well that's what we're trying to do here.
Adam:
So you actually truly invent colors, you invent colors for buildings, you invent colors for customers. They come to you and they say this is a type of look that we're, that we're wanting. And you and your team have to figure out how to make that happen.
Nancy:
Exactly. We have a team of about 10 chemists just in the area where I work and that's just one location. And all day long they work on different colors.
Adam:
The products you guys have brought to market and the ways you guys now put your products out there, has it changed the way customers build buildings and the way customers think about their own structures?
Jeff:
It might not change the way they build them structurally but certainly change the way that they design them. Certainly we see more special effect coatings on trim. For example, we see darker colors on roofs that are solar reflective coatings, whereas 10 years ago that might not have been the case.
Rick:
Novo was an interesting one, and completely different because it's in effect coating.
GFX: Rick Afton Global Technical Director, Coil and Extrusion Markets
What do I mean by effect? It's visual effect it gives you a metallic-y kind of visual effect that you can't get with any other system that we sell currently. And it is based on the raw material that we can get that we have gotten and gives you various types of of gold or silver type glistening appearances.
Nancy:
The beauty of this coating is that there is a sparkle and you have a brilliance of color. You have this depth, rich color, but you also can get a sparkle appeal. And this is, these are some examples that really show off the intensity. We can do it in a more subtle form, but you can get that sparkle you can turn it into from different angles, you get this rich color that you don't see in typical mica metallic coatings.
Jeff:
Our customers who have their own marketing organizations, they've been very involved in driving a lot of not just the new products but a lot of the new colors and the special effects.
Nancy:
I think it's kind of an art. It's like I'm a chemist, but you also have to out like a bit of the art flavor in there and just kind of think outside of the box and
Adam:
There's got to be a creative.
Nancy:
Yeah definitely. You can do a color like this with different pigments, you can do that inside, in your bedroom. You take it outside and you put it in the fence in the sun or on a building in the sun and have it stay that color, that's the challenge. And so that's where the chemistry comes into it. We need to know how to formulate the pigments, how to create the system so that we see that color for a long time.
Channing:
Well I think what it is now is we've got customers who will come looking to Valspar in order to come up with some new products or new designs.
A lot of it will be in whether it's in an aesthetic, environmentally friendly or going into something they've just never seen before and they're looking to us to come up with that next generation of technology that's going to help them compete in the marketplace. We understand very clearly what raw materials have the biggest effect in our coatings.
So it's helped us to optimize performance, balance cost, which is always important to our customers and select the right coating systems for the individual product and end use that they have.
Adam:
Standing back and looking at the true innovation, science and ingenuity of color, is nothing short of amazing. From the test fence to color match technology, to constant introduction of new products, Valspar Coil and Extrusion takes over 200 years of coating experience and puts it on the facade of buildings everyday with confidence. This has been the Building Science of Valspar Coil and Extrusion. I'm Adam Grubb.
GFX: building science valspar
