Comparison Between Engineering Plastic and Ordinary Plastic

Compared with ordinary plastic, engineering plastic has excellent mechanical properties, wear resistance, heat resistance, chemical resistance, electrical properties and dimensional stability. Engineering plastic is lighter than metal material; Easy molding, less energy consumption; It can be used as structural materials instead of some metal, and has become the fastest growing material in the development of plastics industry in the world. Because of different chemical structure, there are also some differences in drug resistance, friction characteristics, electrical and mechanical properties. And due to the different molding, there are suitable for any molding way, also can only be processed in a certain molding way, resulting in the application of limitations. It can be processed into various products by the usual plastic processing methods, and polymer blends can be made by toughening technology, block copolymerization or several polymer mixing methods, so as to improve the performance and make its impact strength close to the metal. Thermosetting engineering plastics, with poor impact resistance, so it’s mostly filled with fiberglass. In addition to the big impact resistance of polycarbonate for engineering plastics, it’s also with disadvantage of small elongation, hard and brittle, but if added 20-30% of glass fiber, it can be improved.

The main characteristics for engineering plastic:

1. Small density, 1.0 — 2.0, generally it’s the 1/6 of steel, 1/9 ~ 1/5 of copper, 1/2 of aluminum, has large effect for weight reduction;
2. High specific strength, with glass fiber reinforced engineering plastics, its tensile strength and mass ratio up to 1700 ~ 4000, and steel is only about 1600; Excellent impact resistance and fatigue resistance; Wear resistance, with self-lubricity, can reduce friction coefficient;
3. High heat resistance and dimensional stability; Heat insulation is good, the thermal conductivity is about 1% of iron, and 0.2% of copper;
4. Good electrical insulation;
5. Good chemical stability, and good corrosion resistance for acid, alkali and general organic solvents;
6. Can be freely colored;
7. Easy for processing, high production efficiency;
8. It is easy to compound with glass fiber and various composite;
9. Can reduce costs, save resources and energy.