How to Effectively Search by Plastic Material Properties with Prospector

Q&A

-- Are Suppliers eager to provide curve data?

Not eager. Some of the larger companies do provide multi-point data, but it is not commonly reported.

-- Can you search by FDA, 3A, and USDA approval? 

Yes! If the approval is reported by the material supplier it can be searched in the "Agency Rating" property.

-- Do you have urethanes in your database or is it primarily injection molded thermoplastics?

The database is heavily weighted toward thermoplastic resins.

-- Can you search by moldflow gold approved?

No. The detailed information necessary for mold simulation is not typically reported on supplier technical data sheets.

-- Have you generated all the data or are you using data provided by suppliers?

-- Where and how do you get your datasheets?

Data in Prospector has a mixture of sources. Some suppliers maintain their data themselves with our data management tools. Some suppliers send regular data files. A few companies provide datasheets and we perform the data maintenance in an on-demand basis. This accounts for about 40% of the data in Prospector. The remainder is taken from supplier technical datasheets we source from the suppliers ourselves.

UL Yellow Card data is another matter. Yellow Card data is generated by UL and is available in Prospector.

-- Is it possible to know which grade is homologated by a specific automotive OEM?

Yes! Automotive approvals are available to search via the Automotive Search, or as part of a Property Search in the Automotive Specifications property.

-- If I want USES to lead my search, can I find out what other mfr's are using for similar items as the one I plan to injection or blow mold?

Yes! Uses can be used as part of a Property Search and can be coupled with Processing Method to get the results you are looking for.

-- Is there a way to search for the single best offset material grade from each material supplier rather than dozens of matches from the same vendor?

Not directly, although utilizing the export feature from the results table will allow you to sort and manipulate the information to quickly achieve the result you are looking for.

-- RTI values are availabe in different chapters of properties. Are these data the "real" UL YC ratings and are all the same? Or are they data measured and provided by the manufacturer?

Only the RTI values listed on the Yellow Cards are "official" UL tested data. Everything else is reported by the resin supplier.

-- That means I don't see the official RTI values directly in Prospector, right?

If a material is tied to a UL Yellow Card, the Yellow Card is accessible from the material data sheet. The UL data, however, is not displayed along with the supplier data.

-- We can search by flamability data base. For example as Glow Wire flammability, etc?

Yes! You may search supplier provided flammability data in the Property Search, or you may search UL Yellow Card flammability data in the Yellow Card Property Search.

-- Would be nice if the Dashboard would autocollapse and not clog up the screen. It is annoying to have to manually close it all the time

This has been reported to the development team!

-- Will we be reviewing UL Blue Cards today?  Can this application support searching for UL Blue Cards?

There are not a lot of UL Blue Cards yet, but there are plans to include them in the future.

-- "What is the difference between iq.ul.com/plastics (http://iq.ul.com/plastics/) and ULProspector.com (http://www.ulprospector.com)?"

UL's iQ for Plastics and Prospector have the same source data. iQ was around before UL's acquisition of Prospector.

-- Does Prospector have an archieve of old and oblsolete. Long gone data sheets? I would find value in this. I use other sites for this, but I would think you have a pretty good archive.

Yes. We have a lot of information about products that are no longer considered active. Availability of this information is limited by a number of factors. Due to agreements with some suppliers, the information may be restricted.

-- 95% of my job is finding an alternate to an existing material.

Sounds like justification for using our Alternative Search and Property Search!

-- I would like to receive training on UL logo labels.  Will this be a future training topic?

Visit https://www.ul.com/marks/ for more information about UL Marks and Labels.