November 2019 Newsletter
2019 is turning out to be a significant year for MOCA on several fronts. Mike VanGeyn has returned to his position as Technical Director after a multi year absence working on a chemical fire retardant treatment for wood products.
Since returning to the fold Mike has met with CCMC in Ottawa to hold discussions on appropriate testing and supply chain management requirements for mago boards. Mike was provided with a copy of the current CCMC Tech Guide requirements which mirror those of MOCA in many respects. CCMC concurs with MOCA’s strategy to use multiple accredited factories who have ISO9001 compliant QA systems in place and to have regular batch testing conducted at ILAC accredited labs to the Chinese National Standard in order to determine consistency and completeness of the reaction between MgO and MgCl2 or MgSO4. Having multiple factories producing equivalent products will allow us to increase testing by sharing the costs which will increase code official confidence and acceptance. In time MOCA will have a CCMC Tech Guide registered, which can then be sub-licensed to members.
In October we attended ASTM committee week in Houston following the attendance of several members at committee week in March in Denver. The progression of new standards under ASTM has been a slow and laborious process so far, however a significant advancement was made in Houston by breaking the work into 3 separate task groups.
- E06.21.23A – MGO Standards – Task Group Chair Mr. Ken Krantz – Task Group for developing test methods and specifications for MGO including other test methods for raw materials, such as MgCl2, MgSO4, glass fiber mesh, modifiers, perlite, cellulose, water quality etc., that are to be used in magnesium oxide cementitious board products.
- E06.21.23B – MGO Board Standards – Task Group Chair Mr. Mike van Geyn – Task Group for developing standards for magnesium oxide cementitious board products.
- E06.21.23C – MGO Board Uses & Application Standards – Task Group Chair Mr. Peter Francis – Task Group for developing standards for the uses and applications for magnesium oxide cementitious board products.
We regularly have over 20 participants at these meetings and have over 40 registered voting members for these sub-committees.
We invite interested participants of our industry to join ASTM and our task groups in order to accelerate the progress and develop a standard that better represents our industry and its customer’s needs.
CMMA has attended the last 2 ASTM meetings and tabled translated Chinese standards in Houston. It is our intention to build the ASTM standards in concert with Chinese standards.
On December 3rd several MOCA members will attend this years CMMA AGM held again in Haikou on Hainan Island where QA, standards and related issues will be discussed.
Finally we are also revamping our web site, comments and suggestions are invited to make it ever more useful for our members.