How Much Do You Know about Common Plastic Alloys?

Plastic alloys such as PC-ABS, PC-PBT, PC-PMMA, TPU, TPR and TPE refer to a material formed by the mixing of two or more plastics and they have excellent properties of both materials. They are not simple mixtures of two materials. Special equipment and unique processes and additives must be required.
　　　
PC-ABS
PC-ABS is a blend of PC and ABS, which is usually supplied in granules after blending. If the two materials are simply mixed and then injected directly, the effect is very bad and delamination will occur.
 
PC has advantages of rigidity and toughness and it has disadvantages of stress cracking and high viscosity. The ABS has advantages of having good fluidity but low surface hardness. The blended material PC-ABS retains the advantages of both. PC-ABS has good surface hardness, high rigidity and toughness and good resistance to stress cracking, and its mechanical properties are between the two materials. Its physical properties, mechanical properties and injection temperature are shown in the Table 1.
　　　　
PC-PBT
PC-PBT is a blend material of PC and PBT, which is usually supplied in pellet forms after blending. The advantage of PC is that it is rigid and tough at room temperatures, but under high temperature conditions, thermal deformation is severe. PC has disadvantage of stress cracking and high viscosity. The advantage of PBT is that its rigidity is not affected by temperatures and its deformation is small. The blended material PC-PBT maintains the advantages of both materials. PC-PBT not only has good surface hardness, rigidity and toughness, but also good resistance to high temperature deformation and stress cracking. Its mechanical properties are somewhere in between the properties of two materials. Resistance to high temperature deformation is of great significance to large shell materials. Properties of PC-PBT are shown in the Table 1.
 
PC-PMMA
PC-PMMA is a blend material of PC and PMMA. Both PC and PMMA are highly transparent materials, but the refractive index of the two materials is different. If the two materials are blended, they will still be layered. There is a unique phenomenon because of the layering, that is, it can emit special light. General special light powder is poisonous and cannot be used in food packaging. PC-PMMMA plastic is transparent, odorless and nontoxic, and can emit special light. It is a high-end food packaging material. View the Table 1 for its properties. 　
 
TPU
TPU is a kind of thermoplastic elastomer. PU is the abbreviation of polyurethane. It is mainly used to produce foamed materials, which is commonly called sponges, but it cannot be injection molded. Sponge is a highly elastic material, so people use a modified method in order to be able to produce sponges. TPU is slightly yellow in nature, matte and elastic. The advantage of TPU is that it has excellent elasticity like rubber at low and normal temperatures, excellent oil resistance, chemical corrosion resistance, excellent wear resistance and puncture resistance, excellent outdoor aging resistance and no friction noise between TPU and the ground. These properties make it the best material for manufacturing tires. In addition, TPU can also be used as a sealing ring and  vibration reduction device. Injection performance of TPU is similar to that of the ABS. View the Table 5 for properties of TPU.
 
TPR
TPR or Thermo-Plastic-Rubber is a thermoplastic rubber material. It is a kind of thermoplastic soft rubber that has rubber elasticity and doesn't need vulcanization. It can be directly processed by molding such as injection molding, extrusion molding and blow molding. The TPR material adopts thermoplastic styrene-butadiene rubber such as SBS and SEBS as the basic raw material, adding resin such as PP and PS, filler, plasticizer and other functional additives to form the modified material. TPR comes in transparent or natural white particles and particle shapes, usually spherical particles and ellipsoid particles. TPR has bright surfaces and good reflective properties. Rubber has excellent resilience and good abrasion resistance, excellent slip resistance and shock absorption properties. TPR has better softness and comfortableness than that of rubber, but its tensile strength, fatigue resistance and mechanical properties are not better than that of vulcanized rubber. Check the Table 5 for properties of TPR.
　　
TPE
TPE is also known as thermoplastic elastomer, which is a polymer material that combines the characteristics of plastic and rubber. It has good elasticity of rubber at room temperatures, and can be plasticized and molded at high temperatures (no vulcanization required). The structural feature of thermoplastic elastomer is that different resin segments and rubber segments are composed of chemical bonds. The resin segments form physical cross-linking points by means of inter-chain forces. The rubber segments are highly elastic segments that contribute to elasticity. The physical crosslinking of the plastic segment changes reversibly with the change of temperature, showing the plastic processing characteristics of the thermoplastic elastomer. Therefore, thermoplastic elastomer has the physical and mechanical properties of vulcanized rubber and the processing properties of thermoplastics. It is a new type of polymer material between rubber and resin, and is often called the third generation rubber. TPE has advantages of energy saving, wide application fields, being easy to recycle, reducing costs and greatly improving production efficiency. View the Table 5 for properties of TPE.