How Do You Keep Up With News in Materials?

I hope your answer includes reading Plastics Technology, particularly our monthly “Keeping Up With Materials” department. Starting later this month, there will be an additional way to keep up. We will be launching the Plastics Technology Materials Insider, a monthly electronic newsletter that will reach you via e-mail. Each issue will feature the most exciting new materials on the market—including advance looks at coverage of new materials to appear in the following month’s issue (before it hits the street) and some “web exclusives”—stories you can only find at www.ptonline.com. When property datasheets for these new materials are available, the story will direct you to PLASPEC Global, our new online materials selection datacenter.

We’ll also highlight one or more creative new plastics applications, with links to the Application Database in PLASPEC Global for full details. Materials Insider will also have an Industry News section with headlines or abstracts of upcoming articles on resin pricing, capacity changes, mergers/acquisitions, and personnel changes at your resin suppliers. If there are more details in the next month’s issue, we’ll link you to the full story.

In addition, a special feature in each monthly issue of Materials Insider will be a step-by-step “How To” lesson on using some of the many features in PLASPEC Global for materials searches by resin type, supplier, tradename, properties, applications, processing, and regulatory approvals.

Starting this month, Materials Insider will be an additional value to the free “Basic” subscription to PLASPEC Global. As a Plastics Technology subscriber, you may also receive an e-mailed invitation to receive Materials Insider. We will contact those subscribers who indicated on their subscription form for Plastics Technology magazine that they have influence in specifying or buying plastics raw materials. But anyone who wants it can get a free subscription to Materials Insider. You don’t need to wait for an invitation. The simplest way to get it is to go to www.ptonline.com/plaspec and sign up for a Basic subscription—it’s free, only registration is required. After trying it out, you may want to upgrade to the “Complete” subscription, with access to many more advanced search functions and database features, for only $149 a year.