Engineering Resins

Postconsumer

Four Ways to Fight Sky-High Resin Prices

There are lots of ways to economize on resin costs, but here are four that you may have overlooked: negotiating smarter resin contracts, buying 鈥渇utures,鈥 using recycled resins, and more efficient purging aids. The main idea is to give yourself more choices, no matter what direction resin prices go.

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sustainability

Headlines for the Next 50 Years

Ever wonder what it would be like to get tomorrow鈥檚 newspaper today? After reviewing the most important technical developments of the past 50 years in our October issue, we asked industry experts to help us imagine the biggest headlines in plastics from now to 2055. What we got was a mixture of predictions of what will happen and a wish list of what should happen.

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Air, Land and Sea: Composites Advance on All Fronts

Part II of our report on the leading international composites show includes news for everything from high-tech aircraft manufacturing to boat building and automotive SMC.

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Film Extrusion

New High-Performance Nylons For Automotive, Electronics, Packaging

Nylon producer Ems-Grivory America in Sumter, S.C., is reaching beyond its traditional product range to bring out new partially aromatic nylons that bridge the gap between standard engineering thermoplastics and high-performance specialty polymers.

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Higher-Performing Biopolymers Seek New Market Opportunities

A new generation of biodegradable polymers is going beyond conventional applications like bags and disposable cutlery and packaging.

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New Processes Give Automotive Molders An Edge in Cost and Productivity

Car makers' all-out effort to cut costs is giving rise to new paint-free technologies, including an innovative 'simultaneous-shot" injection molding process that was presented at the SPE Automotive Division's latest annual Innovation Awards ceremony.

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K 2004 Wrap-Up on Materials: Setting New Benchmarks for Processability and Performance

 Higher flow, higher heat, higher barrier, higher clarity, higher stiffness, lower durometer, lower smoke, lower odor—materials exhibits at the recent K 2004 show in Dusseldorf were stretching the bounds of processing and performance properties in all directions.

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Thermoforming

Engineering Thermoplastic Processes Like a Thermoset

The first quarter of 2005 will see the first commercial production of a dramatically new family of resins that offer the processing advantages of liquid thermosets plus the properties and recyclability of engineering thermoplastics.

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nanocomposites

D-LFT Composites Aim for Auto Body Panels

Direct long-fiber thermoplastic (D-LFT) compounding and molding is getting ready to expand beyond non-appearance structural automotive parts to exterior body panels.

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Process Cooling