Engineering plastics, specialty

Honeywell Engineered Applications Solutions is a Honeywell business enterprise that teams Engineering Plastics, Specialty Films and Metal Injection Molding technologies to provide a source for engineered solutions. Honeywell s EAS website supplies a range of technical services and solutions information helpful to the plastics designer. 

Polymer systems have been classified according to glass-transition temperature (T), melting poiat (T ), and polymer molecular weight (12) as elastomers, plastics, and fibers. Fillers play an important role as reinforcement for elastomers. They are used extensively ia all subclasses of plastics, ie, geaeral-purpose, specialty, and engineering plastics (qv). Fillets are not, however, a significant factor ia fibers (qv). 

Plastics. In the plastics industry, the term filler refers to particulate materials that are added to plastic resins in relatively large, ie, over 5%, volume loadings. Except in certain specialty or engineering plastics appHcations, plastics compounders tend to formulate with the objective of optimizing properties at minimum cost rather than maximizing properties at optimum cost. Table 2 fists typical plastic fillers and their uses. 

Commonly accepted practice restricts the term to plastics that serve engineering purposes and can be processed and reprocessed by injection and extmsion methods. This excludes the so-called specialty plastics, eg, fluorocarbon polymers and infusible film products such as Kapton and Updex polyimide film, and thermosets including phenoHcs, epoxies, urea—formaldehydes, and sdicones, some of which have been termed engineering plastics by other authors (4) (see Elastol rs, synthetic-fluorocarbon elastol rs Eluorine compounds, organic-tdtrafluoroethylenecopolyt rs with ethylene Phenolic resins Epoxy resins Amino resins and plastics). 

Plastic also refers to a material that has a physical characteristic such as plasticity and toughness. The general term commodity plastic, engineering plastic, advanced plastic, advanced reinforced plastic, or advanced plastic composite is used to indicate different performance materials. These terms and others will be reviewed latter in this chapter. Plastics are made into specialty products that have developed into major markets. An example is plastic foams that can provide flexibility to rigidity as well as other desired properties (heat and electrical insulation, toughness, filtration, etc.). 

The goal of the polymer industry is the design of a low-cost flame retardant polymer that does not require additives yet still has favorable physical and mechanical properties. New flame-resistant engineering plastics that have been commercialized are used in specialty applications. These include poly aryl sulfone and poly-etheretherketone (PEEK). These polymers work as heat-/flame-resistant polymers, but because of their... 

Pardos, F. Engineering and specialty plastics in the world. 2002 http //pardos.marketing.free. fr/37.htm (accessed October 2004). 

Formaldehyde (CH20) is an important compound in the synthesis of various chemicals on an industrial scale. One of the first industrial applications was in the production of artificial Indigo. The variety of end products produced from formaldehyde include resins or glues (produced by the condensation of formaldehyde with urea, phenol, or melamine) as well as rubber, paper, fertilizers, explosives, engineering plastics, and specialty chemicals like acrolein, methacrylic acid, methyl methacrylate, etc. Because it is nearly impossible to handle in its pure gaseous form, formaldehyde is almost exclusively produced... 

The crystalline polymers such as PPS, LCP, PEEK offer the additional advantages of high solvent resistance. Due to the inherently high cost of the specialty polymers, very few blends have been developed for commercial applications. The only driving force for the development of even the few blends of specialty polymers has been the desire to reduce the cost of the base resins by blending with lower cost engineering plastics, although this invariably results in a lower DTUL. Nevertheless, a few commercial blends of specialty polymers exist and their properties will be discussed below ... 

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