Engineering plastics are a group of plastic materials that exhibit superior mechanical and thermal properties in a wide range of conditions over and above more commonly used  plastics. The term usually refers to thermoplastic materials rather than thermoset plastics.  Pacific West can supply you with all your engineering plastic needs – cut to size, machined and/or fabricated to your specifications and requirements.

Examples of engineering plastics include:

·        nylon

·        acetal

·        polyester

·        higher grades of polyethylene

·        polycarbonate

Engineering plastics are widely used in everyday products and now replace metals in many applications and product fabrication. For example ABS is used to manufacture car bumpers, dashboard trim and Lego bricks, polycarbonate is used in motorcycle visors and nylons are used for skis and ski boots.

Typically, an engineering plastic is chosen for its range of enhanced physical properties e.g. polycarbonate is highly impact resistant and nylons are highly resistant to abrasion. In these types of applications, designers are looking for plastics that can replace traditional engineering materials such as wood or metal. The advantages gained are many: the ease of manufacture of engineering plastics as opposed to metal-working or fabrication, cost, hygiene, low coefficient of friction, the lightweight of engineering plastics compared to iron, longer life span compared to cast iron, noise reduction, no corrosion, chemical and abrasion resistance, and good sliding properties (most engineering plastics are self lubricating).

Other properties exhibited by various grades of engineering plastics include high heat resistance, mechanical strength, rigidity, chemical stability and flame retardency.

To enable engineers to select the right engineering plastic for their project, it is necessary for them to become familiar with some of the key measures and limits of high performance plastics:

·        tensile strength – the ability of a material to resist breaking under tensile stress is an extremely important property.  Although some plastics have lower tensile strength than commonly used metals, their density is lower, thus ensuring that its strength to weight ratio is far better than the metal equivalent.

·        compression strength – is the stress that a material can withstand under pressure.  With engineering plastics, there is generally no ultimate yield, as plastics will slowly deform as compared to metal which can suddenly fail.  Due to the elastic nature of plastics, the stress factor on the material is less than that of metal.

·        temperature – engineering plastics can operate at continuous temperatures of 100-120 degrees centigrade, with short term allowable operating temperatures of up to 240 degrees centigrade.  If higher temperature performance is required, there are some engineering plastics which will operate continuously up to 310 and even 500 degrees centigrade for short periods.

·        thermal expansion – the amount of contraction and expansion of materials due to temperature change.  Plastics are affected more than metals to temperature change, but this can be overcome with clever design.  For example, for long wear strips, incorporating scarf cuts – a 45 degree cut – will allow for thermal expansion.

Industries that benefit from using engineering plastics include:

·        mining

·        manufacturing

·        agriculture

·        automotive

·        food and beverage processing

·        maintenance workshops

·        general mechanical

·        packaging

·        printing

Phone	02 9725 4144
Fax	02 9725 3208
Email	plastics@pacwestcorp.com.au