Costs of plastics materials

A major cost advantage for fabricating products is their usual low processing cost. The most expensive part of the product is the cost of plastic materials. Since the material value in a plastic product is roughly up to one-half (possibly up to 80%) of its overall cost, it becomes important to select a candidate material with extraordinary care particularly on long production runs. Cost to fabricate using most processes and particularly... 

For intricately designed pieces the total cost of plastics materials and labor competed successfully with fabricated metals about 1946. For mediumsized pieces plastics were able to compete about 1953. Plastics are expected to invade large-unit fabrication anywhere from 1961 to 1965. For example, all materials needed for an all-plastic refrigerator unit are known it is simply a matter of economics. 

Table 2.1 Usage and mass cost of plastics materials...

During this period, the ICI laboratories were also making their other great contribution to the range of plastics materials—the product which they marketed as Perspex, poly(methyl methacrylate). As a result of work by two of their chemists, R. Hill and J. W. C. Crawford, it was found that a rigid transparent thermoplastics material could be produced at a commercially feasible cost. The material became invaluable during World War II for aircraft glazing and to a lesser extent in the manufacture of dentures. Today poly(methyl methacrylate) is... 

However, if suppliers data were to be applied without a complete analysis of the test data for each property, the result could prove costly and embarrassing. The nature of plastic materials is such that an oversight of even a small detail in its properties or the method by which they were derived could result in problems and product failure. 

The first interactive electronic encyclopedia for users of plastics, materials selection is carried out using 3 search routines. The Chemical Resistance Search eliminates materials that cannot meet user specified chemical resistance requirements. The other search routines ( Elimination and Combined Weighting ) eliminate candidate materials based on 72 properties, falling within one of the following groups General and Electrical, Mechanical, Cost Factors, Production Methods and Post Processing. All data is evaluated and based on independent tests conducted in RAPRA s laboratories. 

Thus, any laminate may consist of plies selected from paper, polyester, numerous other plastic films, foils, coatings, adhesive layers, metalization, etc. The choice of laminate structure is usually governed by technical requirements, cost of base materials, cost of lamination processes, cost of printing cylinder and process, and the amount of laminate required (quantity), the yield from which the cost per area of laminate is derived. 

The use of plastic materials for routine cell culture on the laboratory scale was introduced at the end of the 1960s, and some characteristics of glass surface, such as hydrophobicity and negative charge, were maintained in these materials. Polystyrene is the most widely used plastic material for animal cell adhesion at present, because of its surface characteristics, its low cost, and also its transparency. For more demanding cell lines, the surface has to be submitted to a treatment that involves coating with proteins such as poly-lysine, poly-ornithine, or extracellular matrix-derived proteins such as fibronectin, laminin, and collagens. 

It is indeed intriguing and very attractive to think of photovoltaic elements based on thin plastic films with low cost but large areas, cut from rolls and deployed on permanent structures and surfaces. In order to fulfil these requirements, cheap production technologies for large scale coating must be applied to a low cost material class. Polymer photovoltaic cells hold the potential of such low cost cells. Flexible chemical tailoring of desired properties, combined with the cheap technology already well developed for all kinds of plastic thin film applications, precisely fulfill the above-formulated demands for cheap photovoltaic device production. The mechanical flexibility of plastic materials is welcome for all photovoltaic applications onto curved surfaces in indoor as well as outdoor applications. 

Anon., Solar Hot Water Heating Systems Identification of Plastic Materials for Low Cost Glazings, PolyNEW, Inc., Subcontract TAR-9-29449-02 Report, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, 2002. 

The metal tube is a multiple-use container sealed with a moisture-proof closure. The tablets are stacked on top of one another. Consequently, a minimum of air surrounds them. The tubes are seamless, extruded aluminum packages. They are closed by tightly fitting plastic snap caps that contain a desiccant chamber. Tubes of plastic materials, such as polyvinyl chloride or polypropene, have been tested with effervescent tablets. Acceptable stability was obtained with some of these products. Plastic tubes are used more often due to their lower cost and lower noise level during the packaging operation. 

Furthermore, the second law of thermodynamics (disorder is the preferred state) implies that the separation (creating order) of plastic materials from a mixture of plastics must involve supplying heat and work. Recycling plastics is, by nature, a costly business and in the extreme case, total recycling requires infinite work and heat. 

Some of the data issued by the Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, will be of interest to those concerned with statistics of the plastics industry. In the Census of Manufactures—1947 there is a section on industrial organic chemicals 22) and one on plastics products miscellaneous manufactures 23). Each section is available as a separate publication. The former includes statistics on the plastics materials industry while the latter concerns the plastics products industry. Presented in each section are data on employment, pay rolls, value added by manufacture, value of shipments, cost of raw materials, expenditures for plants and equipment, and other categories. The next complete census of manufactures will be made in 1954 to cover 1953. An annual survey is published 25) j but the information is not nearly as comprehensive as that in the Census of Manufactures. ... 

Maleated polyolefins are usually used at 1-5% by weight in a WPC formulation, and their retail price is around 1.50/lb. Hence, they cost 1.5-7.5 0/lb of the formulation. This can be compared to the most expensive (in the final formulation) ingredient, a polymer matrix itself, which costs around 70 0/lb, and at 30-40% content (by weight), it costs 21-28 0/lb of the formulation. Therefore, coupling agents may add about 4-20% of a total cost of the materials in the formulation. Plastic often costs about 60-80% of the formulation. 

It is a very seldom situation when a composite manufacturer uses just one stream of its principal plastic. Typically, composite materials are manufactured using variable supplies of a polymer. Manufacturers are maneuvering making a choice between various suppliers, as they always consider cost of plastic and its available properties, listed in the material specihcation. 

The price difference is due to the different land filling cost based on volume rather than weight. Therefore, a weight unit of slag has a volume corresponding to only a fraction of plastic material with a similar weight. 

A spokesman for one of the largest appliance manufacturers said recently The price of steel has been increasing, while material costs of plastics have... 

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