Our Company History
T. Bur Associates came into being after a long and fruitful collaboration between the two company principals, Dr. Anthony J. Bur and Dr. Michael McBrearty. That collaboration began in 1995 when Dr. Bur was at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Dr. McBrearty was at DuPont Co. Central Research Labs. Over the course of this working relationship, they developed novel optical, rheological and dielectric process monitoring instruments for the plastics and chemical industries. These instruments have been used in a number of industry manufacturing facilities, university and government laboratories to measure dielectric properties, optical transmission, temperature, fluorescence spectra, fluorescence anisotropy, concentration of components in mixtures, quality of compounding, residence time in processing machines, clay exfoliation in nanocomposites, viscosity, shear rate and shear stress. Our newest instrument, the dielectric slit die, is a multi-functional sensor that can be used to monitor several quantities simultaneously in real-time with emphasis on dielectric measurements. The R&D work on the full line of instruments involved the construction of mathematical models that describe measurement science, instrument functionality and processing behavior.