CLEVELAND—Alpha Technologies has completed the transition of its 2000 series of testing equipment to its updated Premier line, and also moved to a new headquarters facility.
Alpha, a unit of Roper Technologies Co., relocated over the past two months from its former Akron site to a newly constructed building it is leasing in nearby Hudson, Ohio. The designer and manufacturer of advanced testing solutions for elastomer and polymer materials said the new facility will accommodate its drive to expand product platform innovation and customer support.
"We've been growing and our production space that we had before was very full," Terry DeLapa, Alpha business leader for North America, said during the ACS Rubber Division's International Elastomer Conference, held Oct. 9-12 in Cleveland. "That drove a lot of the decision. We have about 40 percent more production space at the new site."
Construction of the building, located in a new industrial park, began in March and was completed in August. DeLapa said production operations relocated during September, with offices moving in early October. "We have a nice new showroom," she said. "All equipment will be featured, and all the instruments are made in our facility and shipped worldwide."
Alpha Technologies President Mike Lamothe said it took his firm some time to find the right location for its new home. "We are excited to move into a building that will allow us to continue to grow, innovate and support our customers," he said in a statement.
Alpha's business has been growing steadily and is ahead of projections for 2017, according to DeLapa. She said the firm has hired a number of people added over the past year, including an expansion of the services and support staff.
New Premier RPA
The three-year project for Alpha to replace its 2000 series of testing equipment was completed with the debut of the Premier RPA (rubber process analyzer) at the Rubber Expo in Cleveland. Like the other instruments in the Premier line, the RPA has a smaller footprint and up-to-date electronics, DeLapa said at the expo.
The Premier RPA, available for shipment by the end of 2017, boasts such new features a testing for creep and hysteresis energy loss, she said. Alpha also added programmable cavity pressure control, increased strain control, much faster data sampling and processing, a new heating system for expanded test configuration, and electronics to handle extended dynamic range and large amplitude oscillatory shear.
"Before you had to have really large computer capacity to do those kinds of testing," DeLapa said. "Now with the new electronics, it's built into the system, so it enables it to work with more standard computers."
Alpha said key features of the new Premier RPA include advanced data sampling and processing up to 64 times faster data rate per cycle, a more precise stain control and a closed die cavity precision dynamic modulus that provides consistent results across temperature, strain and frequency ranges.
A couple of customers have been testing the new RPA, so it won't be long before commercial versions will be shipped to those sites, she said. There also was a good deal of interest at the IEC.
The introduction follows the updating of Alpha's complete line, which started with the Premier MDR and continued with the Premier MV and Premier HC systems.