Automotive windows

The U.S. rubber processing industry encompasses a wide variety of production activities ranging from polymerization reactions closely aligned with the chemical processing industry to the extrusion of automotive window sealing strips. The industry is regulated by seven Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes [1] ... 

Polyacetals and other engineering plastics cost about half that of cast metals, and are therefore used as replacements for cast metal-intense applications. They have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for contact with foods. Some of the uses of molded polyacetals are as valves, faucets, bearings, appliance parts, springs, automotive window brackets, hose clamps, hinges, video cassettes, tea kettles, chains, flush toilet float arms, gears, shower heads, pipe fittings, pasta machines, desktop staplers, and air gun parts. 

Laminating to produce safety-glass parts, as for automotive windows, is a common practice. A sheet of resin, such as polyvinyl buivral. is placed between properly sized sheets of glass the whole is exposed to slightly elevated temperatures and pressures, to bond the glass tightly to the resin. 

The applications are automotive window seals and fiiel filler gaskets, industrial door and window seals and weatherstripping, wire/cable covering, and hand-held power tool housing/handles. Nonslip soft-touch hand-held tool handles provide weather and chemical resistance and vibration absorption.i Translucent grade is extruded into films for face masks and tube/hosing and injection-molded into flexible keypads for computers and telephones. Certain grades are paintable without a primer. Typical durometer hardnesses are Shore A 60, 76, and 80. 

The best known characteristic of factice, before the invention of partially crosslinked Superior Processing grades of NR and their synthetic equivalents, was the property of conferring dimensional stability to extruded and calendered stocks. Extruded items such as tubes, hose, cables and automotive window seals must retain their configuration during vulcanization either in open steam or during vulcanization by low-pressure processes such as LCM. In this area factice acts as a non-thermoplastic additive. 

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