Education, innovation and fun are the hallmarks of Ashland’s appearance at Booth 1763 at this year’s American Coatings Show. The company is announcing the availability of its Natrostone™ H30 rheology modifier in the Americas. It is also highlighting its new coatings laboratory, its Application Reader Technology™ (ART) device, Aquaflow™ rheology modifiers and an interactive digital rheology game.

Natrostone H30 rheology modifier is a water-soluble polymer specifically designed to thicken liquid-applied stone paint and create the natural look and feel of stone. It imparts stone paint with excellent application, better sprayability and stability, good water resistance, and more efficiency for applicators.

Ashland’s ART device objectively measures the parameters that comprise paint application feel. Unlike subjective evaluation techniques, the ART device generates reliable and quantitative data that enable formulators to better understand differences in paint formulations and to tailor formulations to specific customer preferences for paint feel.

The company recently transformed its technical and analytical services for the paint and coatings industry by adding a dedicated 2,000-square-foot laboratory to its Wilmington campus. The new laboratory, combined with Ashland’s existing Coatings Center of Excellence, provide paint formulators with the resources to test new or modified formulations, understand consumer preferences and tailor their products for success.

Aquaflow nonionic synthetic associative thickeners (NSATs) from Ashland perform in waterborne coatings across an extensive range of latex resin chemistries, paint PVC ranges and tinting levels. Formulators can combine low-shear effective and high-shear effective Aquaflow grades to achieve superior flow, excellent leveling and efficient high-shear viscosity build for precise rheology control.

Visitors to the Ashland booth also can apply their rheology knowledge to compete for bragging rights and prizes in “Ashland’s Rheology Rollout Challenge,” an interactive painting game. Players earn points based on total time for three levels to compete for daily prizes and a grand prize for the best score during the three-day show.

Additional information about Ashland’s products is available online at www.ashland.com/paint-coatings.