How to select the best resin for you? Read more to know
One area of plastic injection molding where we frequently find the most individuality is resin choosing. You must keep in mind that each molded part is distinct based on the project requirements while choosing plastic resins.
Beyond aesthetics, factors including color, material characteristics, processability, and cost influence whether a resin is appropriate for a given application. Customers frequently require assistance when making their resin decision because there are thousands of grades to choose from and new ones are always being developed to address market gaps. We’ll first talk about what plastic resin is before getting into the selection of plastic resins.
The main component in molding plastic is plastic resin. It results from the distillation of crude oil and is a byproduct of oil refinement. The resultant compounds are put through a process that pushes them to form polymerized hydrocarbon chains. Producers of resin can change the manufacturing procedure to generate resins with certain qualities for particular uses. Now that you have a basic understanding of what a resin is, let’s look at some of the important factors to take into account when choosing plastic resins.
Mechanical specifications: Because different resin classes have different tensile strengths, tensile modulus, and elongation at break, it is important to take the part’s strength requirements into account when choosing a resin. The strength characteristics of thermoplastic resins can be altered by adding fillers like glass or carbon fiber.
Chemical reactivity: The interactions of chemicals with resin, such as cleaning solvents and process reagents, worry a lot of consumers. In these situations, it is best to refer to publicly available testing results from resin producers that demonstrate how the material performs in each chemical. In some circumstances, the data might not be available, so testing using particular chemicals will be necessary.
Environmentally friendly: Extremely heat or cold-sensitive parts require resin that is graded appropriately which you can order from justresin.com.au website. This means that for your specific resin, the heat deflection temperature and long-term service temperature are crucial performance indicators. Other environmental factors to take into account include plastic components used in medical devices being exposed to UV light and excessive humidity.
Performance versus commodity: Because of their inherent affordability and availability benefits of higher volume raw material production, a quality injection molder will attempt to match customer applications with commodity resin grades whenever possible. Performance resins excel in applications where specific properties, such as strength or heat resistance, are required.
Semi-crystalline versus amorphous: Due to their random molecular structure, using amorphous resins can frequently be advantageous because they offer larger processing windows and enhanced dimensional control. They are compatible with many adhesives and can be translucent. Although semi-crystalline materials have better mechanical and thermal characteristics, processing them can be challenging.
Shrunk materials: The simplicity of creating a tool or creating a successful molding process depends on how much a resin shrinks throughout the molding process. For this reason, if possible, we attempt to choose resins with reduced shrink rates.