Flammability of Corian

[luvmytoolz]

Hi all, had an interesting thing happen last night that reinforced to me the need to be vigilant when machining. I've been routing some corian outside as I can't swing a cat in my shed, and it was covering the ground with the shavings thrown everywhere. Last night the cutter nicked a screw and threw a couple of sparks which ignited a bit of the shavings on the ground.

I was quite amazed a couple of sparks would ignite it so easily so I let it go as I was curious to see what would happen, it continued to smoulder and slowly burn it's way across the waste, and 30 minutes later it was still going!

The grounds wet as we're in the middle of winter, and it was late so the dampness was well and truly setting in, I can only imagine how bad this could have been in a dry shed if i wasn't aware.
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[mino]

Well, it is plastics after all. Just a hard one.

 

[Packard]

The video below should satisfy your worries.  Talking head for the first minute, but then the demo.

It appears to ignite briefly while the torch is still burning, but self-extinguishes as soon as the torch is removed.

The torch does leave a burn mark.  So, it is definitely not stone.

 

[woodbutcherbower]

It's the same with many/most materials. Try and set fire to a 6" x 6" cross-section lump of oak with a blowtorch - you'll still be blazing away when the sun comes up. But a pile of shavings? WHOOSH ...

The above video is therefore completely meaningless.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Corian is mostly stone dust bound with plastic. Even if incinerated you would still have a pile of stone dust.

I’ve toured burned industrial buildings and often the ones with wood columns remain standing even when the columns are burned down to 1/4 the original diameter. Steel columns get soft and collapse (often bringing the whole building down) in similar conditions.

 

[woodferret]

The video is useless.  Corian is euroclass C (sometimes B) EN 13501-1.  That means in about 10-20 mins, it'll flashover - i.e. the heat will release enough combustible vapors near the surface that it literally 'flashes'.  Depending on who you ask, it's 'low combustibility', but it is still pure fuel.

It's flame rating is

 

[Crazyraceguy]

My concern is the screw. How on earth do you hit a screw, when routing Corian? Screws have no business around Solid Surface of any brand. You can't screw into it, bad things will happen.
"Technically" you can put a screw through it and into another material, but there must be adequate clearance around the hole. Corain expands/contracts with temperature change.
It's kind of a bad combination of heavy and delicate.

It's all plastic. The brands vary in chemistry, from completely Acrylic to Polyester blends. The Polyester can make it more translucent. This can change the look of the particulates.

 

[Michael Kellough]

From Corian technical bulletin, Corian is about 1/3 acrylic resin and 2/3 aluminum trihydroxide.

So it isn’t made of stone dust, unlike some other solid surface materials.

 

[Svar]

From Corian technical bulletin, Corian is about 1/3 acrylic resin and 2/3 aluminum trigydroxide.

Aluminum trihydroxide is a fire retardant, which explains why corian is not easily ignitable when in solid block (per video).

 

[Packard]

Corian is mostly stone dust bound with plastic. Even if incinerated you would still have a pile of stone dust.

I’ve toured burned industrial buildings and often the ones with wood columns remain standing even when the columns are burned down to 1/4 the original diameter. Steel columns get soft and collapse (often bringing the whole building down) in similar conditions.

A kitchen fire in a residential home, extinguished before damaging the rest of the house, will need new Sheetrock and paint and a new floor plus cabinets and appliances.

But when a customer of mine had a kitchen fire in his house the job was much bigger.  That because it was framed with galvanized steel studs.  Though by all appearances the studs were pristine, the head compromised the strength of the steel.  It became a much larger job. 

With a wood stud, heat alone does no damage.

 

[luvmytoolz]

My concern is the screw. How on earth do you hit a screw, when routing Corian? Screws have no business around Solid Surface of any brand. You can't screw into it, bad things will happen.

Normally that would be correct, but this was for our lounge reno. I've welded up a steel frame to push the gas heater more forward to stop the heat from hitting the timber, and I needed to fill a blank wall space on the sides between the metal spacer frame I welded and the timber mantel. I was going to tile but instead used a piece of corian that matched our heater really well, and as the pieces were just a little narrower than I needed, I scribed and cut them to fit a strip of corian side on with the edges rounded over, and screwed into the metal frame facing edge to give a really clean tight fit. When I routed out pockets on the back of the corian to clear the frames wall mounts I'd welded on, I hit nearby screws close to the mount pockets a couple times. Pics probably shows better than I can explain.

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[Packard]

An interesting aside on the fireproof front:  In the early 1970s I was working for a company that made SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels—way before that term was coined).

We wanted to be able to sell in Manhattan.  But Manhattan building codes required a 2 hour fire resistance rating.  That is if there is a fire on one side of a wall, it would not cause combustibles to ignite on the other side of the wall. 

It was generally accepted that a double wall of cinderblock met that criteria.  And it did.  If it was “green”, that is if it were of recent manufacture and all the nascent water content in the manufacture of the cinderblocks still remain.  However, a several year old wall made of that same cinderblock would have lost that moisture the was part of the manufacturing process.

We hired a lab to shoot a film showing that our SIPs did as well as an older wall of cinderblock.  Despite the actual evidence, the people in charge of building standards in NYC continued to accept cinderblock as fire resistant while other panels that in real situations performed as well or better continued to be banned.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

[member=74278]Packard[/member] That seems as much like a "good old boy network" type thing as it could, especially since you are talking about NYC.
Plus, you have the "This is how we have always done it" factor. People can be resistant to change.

They want the new stuff to have a proven record, over a period of time, but you can't get that time, if they don't allow it to be used. Circular problem.

 

[woodbutcherbower]

"This is how we have always done it" factor. People can be resistant to change.

Day #1 of my apprenticeship almost 40 years ago;.

Lesson #1 = "There's no such thing as a job which is almost perfect. It either is - or it isn't"
Lesson #2 = "Never make life difficult for the next guy. He'll be along to fix your work in a few decades and he'll thank you for your consideration"
Lesson #3 = "If you do what you always did - you'll get what you always got. Move with the times"

See Lesson #3.

Kevin

 

[Crazyraceguy]

"This is how we have always done it" factor. People can be resistant to change.

Day #1 of my apprenticeship almost 40 years ago;.

Lesson #1 = "There's no such thing as a job which is almost perfect. It either is - or it isn't"
Lesson #2 = "Never make life difficult for the next guy. He'll be along to fix your work in a few decades and he'll thank you for your consideration"
Lesson #3 = "If you do what you always did - you'll get what you always got. Move with the times"

See Lesson #3.

Kevin

#1 Yes. This goes along with one I heard when I was young. "Good enough is good enough." People with this mentality will always accept less and less.

#2"Never make it harder for the next guy......because it might be you"
    "Do it right, the first time. It always costs more (time and money) to do it over"

#3 Is exactly why I got into Festool, in the first place. I have adapted to/adopted this newer way of thinking. I have spent many years doing projects that are very similar to the ones I still do, to this day. The end result/final product doesn't change that much. The colors/patterns/materials change with the designer's taste and the dimensions change to fit the location, but the core product is similar.
The process has changed quite a bit, partly because of the tools, which changed the method.

This sometimes makes me wish I could get another chance at some of the jobs I have done in years past.
I would really love to know how many of these reception desks, check-in stations, nurse stations, bars, and point-of-sale units I have built over the years. There is just no way to know or even guess.

The thing I always say to the new guys is simple.
"The softest, easiest to cut thing, in the entire shop.....is you!"

Sorry, we got off topic

 

[rst]

My father always said...if you don't have time to do right today, how the BLEEP will you find time to fix it tomorrow

 

[Packard]

There was an elderly tool and die maker at the shop where I used to work. He once told me about the first three weeks of his apprenticeship about 60 years in the past. 

The first day, the lead toolmaker gave him a block of steel that measured approximately 3” x 3” x 3”.  He also gave him a piece of sheet metal and told him that he was to use hand files only to turn that piece of sheet metal into a perfect template of a hemisphere that had a 1.3” radius.

Then, also using hand files only, he was to shape the block of steel into a perfectly round orb that was 2.6” in diameter.

Each of the tasks were checked for accuracy by the toolmaker.

Then the toolmaker had him take that round ball and again using hand files only, convert it to a perfectly square cube.

I suppose there was some skill building involved, but the primary goal for these tasks was to see if the apprentice had the patience to do the work.  It was a culling out test.  A lot of would-be toolmakers decided that “toolmaking is not for me”.

I’m sure there is some parallelism in woodworking to that square-to-ball-to-square indoctrination.  I’m self-taught in this arena, so I was never subjected to that ritual.