Waterborne polyurethane beads
Our Technology
The initial technical developments of Polyurethane (PU) beads began in the 1980s. Dr. Gontrano Pareschi was the inventor of the first coloured PU beads technology for special visual and tactile effects. Dr. Pareschi started production in his laboratory and in the 1990s he granted the know-how of coloured beads to Supercolori Spa in Italy.
The team at Supercolori were able to scale up the technology to production scale and develop the market for coloured beads. Based on their experience and the market knowledge they successfully developed transparent polyurethane beads and polyurethane beads also with different chemical composition than the initial beads. After becoming part of the Lamberti Group they have also developed bio-based beads.
The Proprietary Process allows to easily obtain and adjust average particle size and particle size distribution, the surface structure, the toughness, the crosslinking density and the chemical composition. Our waterborne polyurethane beads are higly crosslinked and highly elastic with a deformation value over 400%. The spherical shape of the beads is thus not destroyed by stress during processing or use. The beads are insoluble in most solvents and monomers including water.
The optimized manufacturing process enable us to control the chemical reaction to obtain the desired polymer structure and our beads do not contain any solvent or VOC. Our polyurethane beads are available as:
- 100% solid content (dry powder) under the name Decosphaera®.
- 60-75% solid content (wet powder) under the name Decosphaera® Wet
- 30-40% solid content (pumpable liquid) under the name Adimatt