Recent enhancements to Prospector for Plastics, Metals & Additives help you search faster and better understand material properties.
Navigate like a Pro!
Prospector's new layout has a collapsable navigation bar on the left to quickly access searches and tools from any page in Prospector. The top navigation has been updated to help you easily manage your account, access our new Help feature, and reach out to us for assistance.
We encourage you to contact us to report missing products or property information. We'll track down the data for you quickly!
- New predictive keyword search. Just start typing and Prospector will display matching text in a dropdown menu.
- Browsable directory of all products, generics and manufacturers listed in Prospector.
- Collapsable navigation allows for more space to view the search, results, and data display areas.
- Easily manage your account and preferences.
- Help section with 'How to' articles, webinars and tours.
- Contact us anytime for assistance or to report missing data.
Learn about properties right from the datasheet
Properties on datasheets now link to helpful Property Descriptions and visuals to quickly gain a cursory understanding of properties associated with products. Property Descriptions are available to our customers that subscribe to Prospector Plus, Premium or Unlimited.
Note: Property Descriptions can also be accessed from Prospector's Property Search.
Refine searches for better choices
The 'Refine Search' button appears on the results page for Alternative Resin Search and Prospector's Property Search.
- When searching for an alternative plastic, clicking the button displays a tab of choices that enable you to refine your search to choose the best material meeting your project's requirements - view demo.
- For Property Search, clicking the button opens the search feature to enable to you to modify property values and add more properties to your search - view demo.
Typical Values Data
Typical Values represent property values that have been calculated from all products in the same Generic Family classification, which can be helpful information when reviewing a product's properties or when property data is missing.
For example, if you are viewing a Polycarbonate datasheet that is missing Maximum Drying Time information, Prospector does the heavy lifting by displaying data value ranges of all Polycarbonate materials in the database.
The ability to compare a product's properties to Typical Values is available with a subscription to Prospector Basic, Plus, Premium or Unlimited.
Display rank details for possible offsets
The Alternative Resins Search displays a Rank column in the search results table that presents products in a sorted order by materials that most closely match the product you want to replace. Clicking on percentage rank bars displays a Rank Details page that includes a link to quickly compare both materials.
- The ranking information shows how the offset material ranks on a relative scale within all materials that appear in results from your search.
- A rank of 100% shows the best correlation within the results set, and 0% shows the least optimal correlation.
- Compare materials side by side in a datasheet view
- From results, click these icons to display Rank Details
- Relative ranking
Find solutions, not just materials.
Leverage Prospector's dynamic tools and features to gain greater control and flexibility in materials selection.
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I can not research
Hi Cindy,
If you are having trouble using Prospector, please feel free to contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help. https://www.ulprospector.com/en/contact/new
Thanks!