Plastics production methods

In recent years there has been some concern in the thermosetting material industry that usage of these materials is on the decline. Certainly the total market for thermoset compounds has decreased in Western Europe. This has happened for a number of reasons. One is the image that thermosets tend to have as old-fashioned materials with outdated, slow production methods. Other reasons include the arrival of high temperature engineering plastics... 

One general method of improving the performance of plastic products in impact loading is to prevent, by design and handling, the formation of notched areas which act as stress... 

Failure can be considered as an actual rupture (stress-rupture) or an excessive creep deformation. Correlation of stress relaxation and creep data has been covered as well as a brief treatment of the equivalent elastic problem. The method of the equivalent elastic problem is of major assistance to designers of plastic products since, by knowing the elastic solution to a problem, the viscoelastic solution can be readily deduced by simply replacing elastic physical constants with viscoelastic constants. 

Uncertainty about a material s properties, along with a questionable applicability of the simple analysis techniques generally used, provides justification for extensive end use testing of plastic products before approving them in a particular application. As the use of more FEA methods becomes common in plastic design, the ability of FEAs will be simplified in understanding the behavior and the nature of plastics. 

Another factor to consider in the early stages of design is material selection in relation to cost per volume rather than by weight. This subject volume vs. weight will be reviewed latter in this chapter entitled Analysis Method. Since the material value in a plastic product is usually over one-half of its overall cost, it becomes important to select a candidate material with extraordinary care. 

The practice of molding inserts in place is usually employed to provide good holding power for plastic products, but there are drawbacks to this method. It normally takes a pin to support the insert, and since this pin is small in relation to the cored hole for the insert, it is easily bent or sheared under the influence of injection pressure. Should the insert fall out of position, there is danger of mold damage. Also, the hand placement of inserts contributes to cycle variation and with it potentially product quality degradation. Some of these problems can be overcome by higher mold expenditures,... 

Material and process interaction and their effects on the performance of plastic products are important factors for the designer to understand. It can result in design limitations such as a selected material meeting performance requirements but not pro-cessible by the desired method of fabrication. Most of the limitations that are reviewed in this book can be corrected and do not effect the product performances when qualified people handle the limitations. However they are presented to reduce or eliminate potential problems. 

This photoelastic stress analysis is a technique for the nondestructive determination of stress and strain components at any point in a stressed product by viewing a transparent plastic product. If not transparent, a plastic coating is used such as certain epoxy, polycarbonate, or acrylic plastics. This test method measures residual strains using an automated electro-optical system. 

This subject effects designers since many products have the requirement by regulations or otherwise to use recycled plastics. Different methods are used to recycle materials to provide plastics with a continuing life. Method used is influenced by factors such as costs, quantity involved, weight involved, size and shape, complexity of mixed types of plastics, extended of contamination such as metallic particles, continued availability of material, etc. (Recognize that they can also be used as energy sources through incineration that can be combined with production of electricity and/or hot water for example). 

If a plastic product is free to expand and contract, its thermal expansion property will usually be of little significance. However, if it is attached to another material, one having a lower CLTE, then the movement of the part will be restricted. A temperature change will then result in developing thermal stresses in the part. The magnitude of these stresses will depend on the temperature change, the method of attachment and relative expansion, and the modulus characteristics of the two materials at the point of the exposed heat. 

Plastic products are made by a variety of basic manufacturing processes. As an example a major method such as extrusion has subdivisions that include profile, pipe, tube, film, sheet, coating, post forming, etc. equipment In injection molding there are subdivisions such as coinjection, gas assist, foam, inmold decorating, etc. equipment. There are literally hundreds of processes used with only about the dozen, as reviewed in this chapter, that are principally used (2). 

Different methods are used for joining or fastening and assembling plastic products and plastic to other materials. It is im-... 

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. 

Applications Radiotracer measurements, which combine high sensitivity and specificity with poor spatial resolution, have been used for migration testing. For example, studies have been made on HDPE, PP and HIPS to determine effects of manufacturing conditions on migration of AOs from plastic products into a test fat [443]. Labelled antioxidant was determined radio-analytically after 10 days at 40 °C. Acosta and Sas-tre [444] have used radioactive tracer methods for the determination of styrene ethyl acrylate in a styrene ethyl acrylate copolymer. 

Rotational molding creates a wide variety of plastic products that cannot be made effectively, efficiently, or economically by other means. What sets this method apart from others is that it can create thin-walled, hollow parts that exhibit no weld lines or scarring from ejector pins and from the process itself. It also has the advantage of having little scrap and minimal molded-in stresses, due to the low pressure and low shear rate characteristics of the process. Finally, it can be used to make parts that are very large which would be impossible to manufacture by other methods. 

For details of the test methods used to measure physical properties reference is made to Handbook of Plastics Test Methods or the more recent Handbook of Polymer Testing [2, 3]. Standard tests have their limitations most were intended for quality control rather than prediction of service performance and produce arbitrary rather than fundamental measures of the properties. They do have the advantages of making data compatible with others and often have known reproducibility. In many standard methods the user is encouraged to opt for standard or preferred conditions which may not have relevance to the service conditions of the product. It is then sensible to base the testing on standard methods but to use more relevant conditions of, for example, time, temperature or stress. 

Pore dimensions may have a more subtle effect on decay rate depending on component dimensions and production method of the manufactured material. Products made from pasted starch, LDPE, and EAA (2) typically appeared as laminates of starch and plastic when examined by scanning electron microscopy (Figure 1). The dimensions of inter-laminate channels (i.e., pores) were not uniform and ranged from about 50 to 325 m in cross-section (22). Since flux is dependent on diffusional path area, the smaller pores can be an impediment to movement of solutes from the interior to the surface of the films. Figure 5 illustrates two films in which the laminate units are the same thickness, but differ in length. When the starch is removed... 

An important step in the manufacture of any plastic product is the fabrication or the shaping of the article. Most polymers used as plastics when manufactured are prepared in pellet form as they are expelled from the reactor. These are small pieces of material a couple of millimeters in size. This resin can then be heated and shaped by one of several methods. Thermoset materials are usually compression molded, cast, or laminated. Thermoplastic resins can be injection molded, extruded, or blow molded most commonly, with vacuum forming and calendering also used but to a lesser extent. 

For the production of foamed plastics two methods can be essentially differentiated. 

This method is normally followed for plastic products. However the same with modifications of equipment is adopted for manufacture of small rubber components. By careful control of the feed stock the rubber products can be vulcanized in less than several minutes. This method can be completely controlled by proper feed, injection and demoulding cycles resulting in low rejection rates and lower finishing costs. 

On-line inspection is a form of testing and in this context dimensional measurements are those most often made. Apart from gauges, micrometers and so on, there are various optical, electrical, nuclear and other methods which may have advantages in production circumstances. Descriptions of the use of such techniques can be found in the literature and in manufacturers data sheets. Some fairly recent examples relating to rubber and plastics products are given in references 12 - 16. However, the various techniques will not be reviewed here. 

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