What it is
Custom Formulation Development is MCPU's contract development service: we take a performance target — a burn rating, a Tg window, a demold time, a bio-content threshold — and build the polyol side, additive package, and process window that hits it in your plant, on your equipment, at your line speed.
Key benefits
- Bench formulation and iteration against your written performance spec.
- Reverse engineering and replacement of discontinued or restricted raw materials.
- Pilot trials with hand-mix, high-pressure, and low-pressure dispense correlation.
- Toll blending and packaged B-side supply once the formulation locks.
- Documentation support for ASTM, UL, and USDA BioPreferred certification paths.
How it works (chemistry overview)
Development starts from the reaction profile rather than a catalog page: equivalent weight, functionality, and hydroxyl number are chosen to hit the crosslink density the application needs, then catalyst, surfactant, blowing, and flame-retardant packages are tuned around the exotherm and the demold window your process allows.
Applications
- TCPP and restricted-chemistry replacement programs
- Bio-content targets for USDA BioPreferred procurement
- New product launches needing a full B-side system
- Troubleshooting scale-up gaps between lab and production
Sustainability profile
Every development program can carry a renewable-content target using Honey Bee® reactive modifiers, plus halogen-free and low-VOC constraints written into the spec from the first bench batch.
How a development programme runs
Custom Formulation Development is a process, not a catalog item. Each stage has to close before the next one opens, and a sample is a possible outcome of the work rather than its starting point.
- Initial non-confidential discussion. You describe the performance target and the application in general terms. No formulation detail changes hands yet.
- NDA. A mutual non-disclosure agreement is executed before either side shares formulation or specification detail.
- Review of the existing formula and target specification. Our chemists read the current system, the raw-material constraints and the written spec, then say plainly whether and how the target can be reached.
- Bench development. Formulation work in the Pittsburg lab: polyol side, additive package and process window built against the spec.
- Testing. Property and performance testing on matched samples, using the test methods your specification names.
- Customer trial. Material runs on your equipment, at your line speed, with hand-mix and machine dispense correlated.
- Scale-up. Toll blending and packaged supply once the formulation and the process window lock.
What we need from you
- A non-confidential statement of the performance target and the application.
- After NDA: the current formulation or raw-material list, and the written specification it must meet.
- The process it has to run on — equipment, line speed, demold or cure window, packaging.
- The test methods and certifications the finished part is judged against.