When do we use general purpose materials in injection molding?

Our part designers and mold designers ask themselves these question when we get an offer our order from our customers.

IS the material that they have specified the right plastic for injection molding their specific part or: can we use a better solution. ( not always cheaper, but of cource we take that alsin into account.)

General purposes materials are plastics for products that don-not require specific demands such as resistance against high or low temperature, chemical resistance, that have an exceptional wear and tear characteristics.

Think of ABS , PS or PP. Usually these materials are used in low cost injection molding for example of toys ( of course lead free) , disposable cutlery or cheap electronic housings.

Usually the maximum usage temperature is 90 degrees Celsius.

Standard or general purpose plastics are found above all in packaging, disposable tableware, carrier bags, toys, packaging of cosmetics and simple domestic appliances. They are priced low and easy injection mold .

They are the typical mass produced by every plastic granulate manufacturer ( BASF, Exxon, Chimei). Typical properties are stored in the databases of the manufacturers. There is a wide assortment of a variety of manufacturers.

These granulates are easy and fast to injection mold by our company, they have usually a good flow in the mold. So the mold design is quite easy to do.

Also this group of general purpose plastics can be split up in 2 sub groups:

Group one the Poly-olefins: these are plastics like PS (polystyrene) PE , and PP (Poly-Propylene).
- these poly-olefins are based on only carbon and hydrogen.

plastic that are combined: ABS (Acrylonitriel-Butadiene-Styrene), ASA (Acrylonitriel-Styreen-Acrylaat), PMMA (Poly-Methyleen-Methyl-Acrylaat) SAN (Styrene-Acrylo-Nitrile).