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I had a customer call me about a white circle that appeard on her top. By the faucet she keeps an on the counter soap dispensor it is made of stainless steel and has a thin foam pad on the bottom. Well under this dispensor the material has turned very cloudy white, and is smooth to the touch. I have not yet had the chance to try and sand it out or even try and clean it off yet, I only had a chance to look at it. The material is EOS I spoke with them them today and it was explained that it should sand out and that the water and moisture are trapped under the dispensor and they are reacting with the material causing it to turn cloudy. I have never had this happen before and was wondering if anyone else has had this happen and if so how did you remedy it?
Hi Steve,
Ive seen that happen before. We used to duplicate in the lab using boiling water using an old NEMA test. We boiled water in an aluminum container and poured about 10 milliliters of the boiling water on a sheet, and then sat the alumium vessel in the puddle. Sometimes a circle would appear under the container.
What happenes is the water is driven into the ATH, and a water molecule will sit on the surface of the ATH showing up as a big white sphere. Its more apparent in dark colors. Most of the time it would fade over time.
However Ive seen some cases where the effect didnt fade that much. We used to design our sheet goods to pass this test and would do this test as a QC function to check the performance.
Sometimes there are mixing problems where the material is not adequately ,mixed that can can contribute to this effect. Type of ATH can also contribute, as the resin type. Some types of resin are hydrophobic, (repels water) while others are hydrophillic (attracts water).
I also have seen instances in China where some or all of the ATH was replaced with calcium carbonate (which is alot cheaper than ATH) which also exacerbated this type color change . If the material has a lot of calcium as a filler it wont hold up well to any weak organic acid, like lemon juice, vinegar or soft drinks. Ive even seen instances where the material will fizz if lemon jucie is poured on it.
I dont know what if any of these things may or may not apply to your material.
Sorry for being so long winded, but the short answer is that I have seen this type of defect before.
Sometimes its a surface effect and you can sand it out, sometimes Ive seen it go deeper.
Steve,
I have LG Timberwolf Granite on my vanity. I have a soap dispenser on it, and I get a white ring under it. I have not tried to get it out, it is staring to look bad though.
I just figured since this thing was made in China, it was leaching some heavy metal, lead, radioactivity.. something…Hi Lenny,
I was hoping that you would see this and have an answer for me. It makes sense but I was surprised because I had never seen this before. I thought nonporous ment something like this could not happen especially water. The surface itself is smooth and you cannot feel any effect of this.
Ken Trinder at EOS had said they have seen this before and as it dries out the spot should go away, If not then I would have to sand it out, explaining that it should not have gone deep into the material.
I’ll find out soon enough.
Thanks LennyHi Steve.
I check in here all the time. But if I miss something you need an answer on just PM me, to draw my attention to the post.
Most likely it should fade, or sand out. But let me tell you a true story while Im on the subject. I was in China, and got a call from a distributor in the US who was buying “acrylic” material from China. This was not EOS material, so let me say that right up front.
He said a few sheets got dropped in the snow and turned from Danny Glover to Mel Gibson in complexion, and didnt turn back. And the custommer really wanted Mr Glover complexion sheets in thier kitchen.
I said Ive seen that effect before, but never from falling in the snow.
We (US distributor and I) visited the factory.
As soon as I stepped out of the car, I said they aren’t making acrylic here. The guy was amazed and said “you haven’t even gotten in the door how can you say that? “ I said breathe deep thru your nose and remember that smell…its polyester!
Upon touring the factory, I found they didn’t have enough ATH on hand to manufacture the quantity he was ordering, but they sure did have a lot of calcium carbonate.
They had one ancient aging drum of acrylic resin versus a dock full of polyester. The mixing times were way too short. While we arguing over these facts (and many others, I could write a book on that 1 visit, but wanted to keep the post short) with the factory owner in the conference room, when I excused myself to go to the bathroom. The factory owner wanted to have someone escort me, but I said “no, you all go right ahead and discuss this, I know where the bathroom is at.”
I went running around on my own until I located a sheet that turned white when water was poured on it and their pigment supply. I found 2 little cans (less than 1 quart total) of pigment that did not contain lead or cadmium. The other 500 gallons all leaded or cadmium based.
So I loaded up the 2 cans of unleaded I could find, and numerous examples of the leaded pigment and cold water whitened sheet and went dancing back toward the main building when the guys the factory owner sent to look for me….found me!!!!!!.
Well I must say that was an interesting meeting indeed. Although they threatened to bar me from the factory in the future all the problems were amazingly solved and the distributor got quite an education ala Lenny style.
The things I do for a client!
Worth a try Andy! Great Idea! Steve let us all know how it works out!
BTW on the sheets from Chinese Hades I mentioned in my previous post, Nothing short of dumping them in a volcano wouild remove the whitening. However Im hoping Steve has material made in China to good ole American standards.
Lenny if you remember, I called you with a hazing problem, which could not be sanded out. I won’t mention the mfg, but they kept insisting that it was a sanding problem. Guess everyone in the country forgot how to sand at the same time. I ran your “tests” in my oven and then wrote a note to them. Suggesting that maybe, perhaps, coulda, of course not them, may have subsituted Calcium Carbonate for ATH. I got a scalding letter back, how could I accuse them of that, I had dishonored them etc etc etc. Amazing when new containers came in, everyone once again learned how to sand, cause there was no more problems.
Hard to believe that someone in China would try to cut corners isn’t it
On a similar note, I have seen dark poly material get a “fog” in it from overheating. From what I have been told, ATH contains a water molecule, which, when heated can be released, causing the fogging. I have seen this from customer abuse and also from heat being generated when sanding or polishing. It most often happened when polishing Avonite, with cove splash and letting the polishing pad hit the deck while polishing the splash. Most times it was removeable with sanding.
I am sure I have mentioned this before. The old Avonite Poly material turned darker under canisters or anything left sitting in the same spot for a long period of time. Samples also got darker if stored in a drawer.
That does not seem to happen now.Posted By Wags on 11 Feb 2010 06:42 PM
On a similar note, I have seen dark poly material get a “fog” in it from overheating. From what I have been told, ATH contains a water molecule, which, when heated can be released, causing the fogging. I have seen this from customer abuse and also from heat being generated when sanding or polishing. It most often happened when polishing Avonite, with cove splash and letting the polishing pad hit the deck while polishing the splash. Most times it was removeable with sanding.I have turned bone acrylic solid surface sinks white from aggresive sanding.
I had a chance today to sand out the white spot on this countertop. Here are the pictures of before and after. As you can see the particulate color is still apparent and the base color has turned cloudy. When you feel the surface it feels smooth, Im still a bit confused whey this happened and I asked the homeowner if I could have the soap dispensor that caused this to see if I could replicate it. She moved in September of last year and just started to notice the white area about a month ago. It didnt take much effort to sand out less then 2 minutes to remove the cloudy area.
As I said when you feel the area it is smooth like the surrounding area, If solid surface is non-porous, what am I dealing with???One thing I will mention is after I went to look at this last week I tried to replicate this on my own in the shop with letting water stand under a soap dispensor and even adding some bleach to it, with no effect. One thing I did do is take a heat gun to material for no less then 5 minutes and it produced the same looking white mark, but strangely enough when the material cooled down the color returned as if I never touched it with heat.
I’ve had another issue with this color material and was able to sand out the discolored area but I wanted to see what would happen if water was in constant contact with it. In the first picture I tried to replicate what was happening with the customers countertop and her soap dispensor being in contact with the countertop. After 3 weeks of contact and keeping the area under the dispensor wet you can see a slight change in color infront of the pen. However the next day the spot was gone and unnoticable.
I filled a bucket with water and placed the offcut in the bucket and after 4 weeks the color bleached out. Notice just the base color and not the particulate
I then cut the piece in half and as you can see the discoloration has penetrated
in about 1/16″.
I’m gonna see what happens when it has time to fully dry out and maybe the color will come back.
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