The broader the range, the more tempting it is to stick with the product you already know. Infinity turns that approach around: your needs are the starting point. Three ways, each addressing a different need, help you find the right abrasive paper backing without browsing the entire catalog.
This article helps you to combine options and find the right product. It complements the ‘Field Guide’ feature in The A Vision #23.
Start to question your needs
You chose often paper out of habit: a basis weight, a product known for years, a familiar purchasing decision. That product has proven itself, and that feels reassuring.
But your needs evolve: a new market to enter, such as fine-grit abrasives for automotive applications; a customer asking for carbon footprint data; counterfeits threatening your current sales; or a production step you’d like to remove. Starting with the question “What do I need to solve today?” reveals solutions that habit alone might never have led you to consider.
Starting with your needs doesn’t mean customizing everything. If you need a proven, competitively priced paper that’s readily available, the answer is The Essentials. With predefined colors, basis weights, and finishes, these products are easy to order and plan around, cover a wide range of market needs, and offer a real advantage for your sourcing.
Three needs, three doors
The entire Infinity offering is organized behind three doors. Each answers a question.
- Are you looking for a proven solutions? Key Solutions brings together the core offering: The Essentials, available and competitive papers; The Innovatives, push your technical limits; and The Classics, the established color lines, organized by applications.
- Do you want your product to get noticed and stand out from the competition? Standout Solutions offers three ways to make that happen. Colors, a palette ranging from classic shades to bolder hues, including custom colors created for your brand. Creative Design, coatings that enhance the backing’s appearance, or printing on the paper—a logo, a message, or an antistatic pattern—that make your brand part of the product itself. Security Fibers, visible or fluorescent fibers embedded in the paper using BeSecure™ technology, to protect your brand against counterfeiting.
- Do you want to combine performance with reduced environmental impact? Ecodesign Solutions brings together solutions that address this at two key stages. First, at the source, with papers made from alternative resources and with no formaldehyde added during production (Safe and Sustainable by Design). Then, during use, with backings that can make your abrasive manufacturing process less resource-intensive and, for certain products, help extend the life of your abrasives through enhanced mechanical properties (Processing Enhancer). For certain adjacent or future applications, understanding the paper’s recyclability potential is also important. The End-of-life Enhancer category brings together papers that can be certified for recyclability.
What if your needs lead through more than one door?
That’s common—and it’s built into the approach. Your main need leads you through one door; your other needs help narrow your choice. Standout Solutions, in particular, works as a set of options that can be added to a solution found behind another door. For example:
- a product from The Innovatives or The Classics, in a custom color created for your brand;
- a latex paper from the Blue Line (The Classics), for wet or dry sanding, with an added BeSecure™ security fiber to deter counterfeiting.
The same product may even sit behind more than one door: your needs determine the path to find solutions, not the product reference.
From your door to the right product
Once you’ve chosen your door, there are different ways to narrow down and to get to the abrasive paper backing that is made for your process, application and specific constraints :
- XPLORER, our search tool, lets you explore on your own. You can combine around 15 criteria and more than 50 options, from application, process, to sustainability requirements. There are even dedicated filters such as Ultra Smooth or carbon footprint results, which will be updated in the coming months. If you want to learn more about that, read our article on XPLORER.
- The Discovery Box, for hands-on samples from all three doors.
- Your usual contact, supported by our CTS team, is always available to provide further guidance and recommend the best solution based on your specific challenge
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Log in to the Infinity Premium Space and start your search in XPLORER
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Photo credits : Munksjö, Istock, Magnific.
