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IDES RELEASES ENTIRELY NEW VERSION OF PROSPECTOR PRO - PLASTICS INFORMATION AND PROCUREMENT TOOL

See MORE data on Prospector Pro CLICK HERE

Laramie, WY (USA) -- For more than fifteen years IDES has provided the plastic materials industry with their Prospector products; tools for finding precise plastics for specific applications. The latest release of Prospector Pro completes the plastic product development lifecycle by offering a comprehensive solution for finding, evaluating and purchasing plastic materials.

"There are many plastic material selection systems available, including supplier and distributor web sites. Although we provide data sheets on more than 40,000 plastics, Prospector Pro again sets the standard by offering much more than just technical data for resins," said Mike Kmetz, IDES President. "We have listened to the needs of our users and developed an entirely new platform that will be of value to virtually any company that sells or buys plastics."

Kmetz adds, "Improved searching in the new Prospector Pro has eased the pain in identifying potential resins. More complete and easier access to engineering design data will be a key benefit to designers and engineers. Procurement departments will love our Sourcing features that now include: detailed Supplier and Distributor contact information, Requests for Quotes, samples ordering and resin purchasing direct from leading resin distributors."

Finding the 'Right' Material for the Job

IDES database now exceeds 40,000 resin grades from over 390 suppliers around the globe. With so many grades on the market it is imperative that users have quick and easy access to the information they need. For the new release of Prospector Pro, IDES has dramatically improved the existing search capabilities and added a number of new, innovative methods to quickly find materials within the database:

Users can save their search properties in a custom 'My Search Properties' folder.
Using a new Power Search feature, users are provided with added flexibility to edit search criteria while searching on material properties, reducing the time spent looking for a product.
Using an Engineering Design Data search helps users find curves and other information that is critical for analysis.
Quick Search returns data sheets in seconds.
A number of Sequential Searches intuitively guide users to specific results including searching products by Uses, Processing Method, UL94 Flammability or Distributor.

Information for Engineering Design

Today, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools are common among Designers and Engineers. One of the challenges, however, has been the availability of solid design data for plastic materials. Prospector Pro solves this challenge by providing in-depth information that is critical to the engineering analysis of a plastic part:

Mechanical design data includes curves (for example: Stress vs. Strain) for a multitude of engineering materials. Data for the curves can now be exported to Excel or HTML text formats.
Flow analysis data is also available and curves can be exported to Excel or HTML text formats.
Additionally, IDES now offers resin testing services for customers if Prospector Pro does not contain the specific information required for the analysis.

Sourcing the Plastic

Once a material is found that meets an application's requirements, Prospector Pro users may take the next step in sourcing the material. IDES' new Sourcing Feature closes the loop for customers needing to procure a resin. For each plastic in the database, Prospector Pro's Sourcing provides any one of the following:

Contact information for the primary resin supplier and multiple distributors.
Request for Quotes (RFQs) that are sent directly to resin suppliers and distributors.
On-line Samples Ordering through General Polymers.
On-line Resin Purchasing through GE Polymerland.

Data Service

With Prospector Pro, IDES is moving towards providing value-added services vs. software alone. If a user is unable to track down a particular material data sheet using Prospector Pro, engineers at IDES will locate the data sheet for the user. The material will then be added to IDES' database of plastic materials and published to Prospector Pro within 2-4 weeks.

Other Enhancements

New Preferences area to create a custom Power Search enabling users to search on preferred properties.
Customizable results table allowing users to choose the number of columns and types of properties to display.

Prospector Pro is available now and more information about IDES' new Prospector Pro material selector tool and services can be found online at: CLICK HERE

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About IDES

IDES "The World's Source for Plastic Materials Information," is the leader in managing technical plastic material product information that empowers sales and marketing functions, while dramatically reducing costs. Our products and services offer our clients proven total plastic material information aggregation, management and display solutions.

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Source: IDES

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