Sabtu, 22 Maret 2014

Common Terms Of The Thermoforming Industry

By Lenna Stockwell


Thermoforming companies around the country can actually provide several services which are important for manufacturing - this may not be known to many people though. To create custom thermoformed packaging for several clients could be the topmost task which these companies are able to do. If it interests you to know more on the terms used by workers, here are a few of them.

The term thermoforming is what describes the process where a sheet of plastic is being heat up to a certain point until it becomes malleable thus can be formed into several products or shaped packages. When plastic is warmed up it is either radiant heat or convection that is being used and then being molded. Upon cooling it down, excess plastic is then removed so you can have the finished product.

Plastic used in thermoforming is called thermoplastic. If you heard about a plastic type known as thermoset plastic, this one is quite different from the first one. Although it is true that thermoset plastic can be melted and molded too, to add heat to this particular type of plastic means that its chemistry is permanently changed thus disabling its potential to be melted down again and remolded to create a new product.

On the other hand, thermoplastic is highly recyclable and can be used and remolded numerous times. There are many different types of thermoplastic, each of which is classified using a special resin identification code. These are codes that you have seen before; they are simply a number surrounded by a triangle formed by arrows. You see them on all sorts of materials, including plastics, paper products, metal products and even glass products. These codes are used to help separate items when they arrive at recycling centers.

The most common resin identification code is perhaps 1, which identifies thermoformed packages and products made from polyethylene terephthalate. This includes plastic water bottles and soda bottles. Most recycling centers around the country will take these and some states offer a deposit refund if you turn them into a specific type of recycling center.

There are many other words and terms associated with thermoplastic, such as PVC, which stands for polyvinyl chloride. This is one of the most widely used types of thermoplastic. Acrylic, nylon and Styrofoam are just a few more common types of thermoplastics. All of these plastics are polymers, which is a molecule made up of large chains of monomers. The monomers are simply molecules that can be bound together chemically. Some polymers are naturally occurring and others are synthetic and have been created by chemists.




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