Polyurethane roller skates

Because people everywhere tend to take their fun seriously, they spend freely on sports and recreational activities. The broad range of properties available from plastics has made them part of all types of sports and recreational equipment for land, water, and airborne activities. Roller-skate wheels are now abrasion- and wear-resistant polyurethane, tennis rackets are molded from specially reinforced plastics (using glass, aramid, graphite, or other fibers), skis are laminated with plastics, and so on. 

Toluene is a primary feedstock used to produce various organic compounds. It is used to produce diisocyanates. Isocyanates contain the functional group —N = C = O, and diisocyanates contain two of these. The two main diisocyanates are toluene 2,4-diisocyanate and toluene 2,6-diisocyanate. The production of diisocyanates in North America is close to a billion pounds annually. More than 90% of toluene diisocyanate production is used for making polyurethanes foams. The latter are used as flexible fill in furniture, bedding, and cushions. In rigid form it is used for insulation, hard shell coatings, building materials, auto parts, and roller skate wheels. 

Before the development of tough, resilient polyurethane wheels, street roller skates used steel wheels that stopped dead when they hit the smallest pebble or crack. Rollerblades would not exist without polymer technology, both in the wheels and in the strongABS plastic used for the uppers. 

Thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers can be molded and extruded to produce flexible articles. Applications include wire insulation, hose, tracks for all-terrain vehicles, solid tires, roller skate wheels, seals, bushing, convoluted bellows, bearings, and small gears for high-load applications. In the automobile industry thermoplastic polyurethanes are used primarily for exterior parts. Their ability to be painted with flexible polyurethane-based paints without pretreatment is valuable. 

Polyurethane elastomer Roller skate wheels, sport arena floors, ski boots, automotive seats (foamed), shoe soles (foamed), etc. 

Solid polyurethane industrial tires are produced for off-road machines (fork and lift trucks, wheelchairs), pneumatic tires for tractors, backhoe loaders, soft-cast elastomer tires for heavy vehicles and skateboard and roller skate wheels. Polyurethane tires for passenger cars have not as yet been commercialized. Pneumatic tires for tractors are produced using the RIM process. Soft-cast polyurethane elastomers are also used for puncture-free tires, especially for heavy vehicles, replacing the air in pneumatic tires. 

MBCA is commonly used as a curative for polyurethanes used in the molding of tires, wheels, skating rollers, and other rollers. 

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