Nylon is one of the oldest and most commonly used thermoplastics but there still seems to be a lot of confusion about properly drying nylon and in general about how nylon is affected by moisture. Moisture in the raw material causes many processing issues and part failures and the affects that moisture has on molded parts seems to confound people as well. I hope in this article to clear some of this up.
Polypropylene based compound eyes TPU market in gearshift knob application
Electric bike turns to PBT/ASA alloy for battery housing
Amcor closing Ohio based bottle preform production plant
Milliken touts polypropylene additives at K2016
Solvay expands PPS portfolio for food packaging
“Rivet” Graphine proves it’s mettle
SABIC shows new high flow polypropylene for packaging applications
We all know that you should always try and run a color concentrate with a carrier resin that matches the material that you running it in. But what if you don’t have the right color concentrate?
Continue reading “What if I Don’t Have the Right Color Concentrate?”
One the biggest technological advancements in plastics over the last 30 or so years have been the improvement in UV stability. I can remember how fast vinyl dashboards in cars used to split and crack from sunlight exposure. Today, you rarely see that until the car has been in the junk yard for a few years. Even white vinyl siding and fencing seem to hold their color reasonably well for a decade or more. This is thanks to additives manufacturers developing really sophisticated stabilizers and anti-oxidants that can be compounded into various plastic materials.
In this post, I wanted to de-mystify what causes UV damage to plastics and how UV stability is tested.
Everyone have a fun and safe 4th.
IBM discovers new recycling process to convert old smartphones and CDs
Dow cutting 2500 jobs in Dow Corning integration
A. Schulman sues form Citadel owners for claiming fraudulent business practices
A. Schulman still sees benefits from acquisition of Citadel
Man dies in press accident at injection molder in Auburn Hills MI
New lubricated TPV challenges rubber in gaskets and seals
BASF launches new global pigments brand
Company develops long glass fiber reinforced polyolefin sheet
The next target of the anti-plastic crowd: your garden hose
Polypropylene prices lowest since 2009
DSM launches new polyamides for die cast metal replacement
There is an excellent albeit highly technical article in the April 2016 SPE magazine, Plastics Engineering, about the differences between thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) and thermoset rubber. You can read it here.
Because I talk primarily about thermoplastics here at The Weekly Pellet, I thought that I might expand on the article a little bit and talk about the different types of TPE that are commercially available.
Back when everyone was running injection molding machines with plungers, if you needed to color material, you had to have it pre-colored at a compounder. The compounder would melt the natural material down, blend in raw pigments and other additives and then re-pelletize the material.
The advent of screw type injection machines and color concentrates significantly reduced the cost of coloring plastic materials. However, running material blended with color concentrate has its challenges. It has to be mixed carefully and the material has to be processed carefully to get good results. Sometimes, even if you do everything right, you end up with nothing but problems.
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