 |
| Polymer Material Selection - my book as paperback version |
Dear community,
welcome to this exciting update!
From today on the paperback version of my book Polymer Material Selection is available worldwide on Amazon. 📖
I invite you all to have a look and grab a copy.
Enjoy the read!
Thank you and #findoutaboutplastics
Herwig
 |
| Polymer Material Selection Funnel Example - Plastic Baby Bottles |
Hello and welcome to this new blog post with the topic of polymer material selection. In this post we cover the material selection of baby bottles as an example of the packaging market. We will apply the Polymer Funnel Method (in detail explained here and in this video).
Figure 1 presents the four different stages of the material selection funnel and this overview serves us as a guideline.
 |
| Figure 1: Polymer Selection Funnel - overview of the four different funnel stages |
Before we start, what are the top 10 markets for plastic applications?
The top 10 markets are:
-Packaging;
-Building and civil engineering;
-Automotive and transportation;
-Electrical and electronics;
-Household, entertainment, and office appliances;
-Mechanical engineering;
-Sports and leisure;
-Medical market;
-Furniture, and bedding;
-Agriculture.
Different types of polymers dominate each market. Packing needs high volume and reliability as well as cost effective commodity polymers, elsewhere Automotive needs engineering and high performance polymers to enable long lasting applications.
Polymer material selection for baby bottles
 |
| Four parts of a standard baby bottle (source: https://www.mambaby.com/at/p/easy-active-baby-bottle-330ml-deep-ocean-babyflaschen-kombi/fc2f4zf001-hdt21/) |
 |
| Table 1: Requirement worksheet for baby bottles. |
 |
| Table 2: Overview preselected grades and their commercial suppliers. |
 |
| Table 3: Qualitative matrix analysis for polymer based baby bottles |
Interested to talk with me about your polymer material selection, sustainability, and part design needs - here you can contact me
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is available for purchase here *NEW*
Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.
 |
| Long-Term Testing Standards of Thermoplastics for Polymer Material Selection |
Hello and welcome back to a new post. As a continuation of the blog post Summary of Testing Standards for Polymer Material Selection we discuss today the topic of long-term testing standards for polymer material selection.
Environmental effects such as temperature, different chemicals, radiation, and time can impact the performance of your plastic product. Irreversible changes are the result and therefore proper preparing by long-term testing during material selection will decrease the chances of part failure under environmental influence.
What are some helpful long-term tests?
Following are the most helpful long-term tests for thermoplastics listed and in Table 1 they are summarized.
 |
| Summary of Long-Term Testing Standards for Thermoplastics |
1) Immersion test in different media (water, water-glycol, aromatics, alcohols, ketones, acids, bases) for 1,000 - 3,000 hours at room temperature and elevated temperature; standard tensile bars; checking mechanical properties before and after;
2) Heat aging test at different temperatures for 1,000 -3,000 hours; standard tensile bars; checking mechanical properties before and after; supportive standard: ASTM D3045;
3) Creep test according EN ISO 899
4) Tensile Fatigue test according ASTM D3479
5) Thermal Index test according IEC60216 and ISO-527-1/-2 (5,000 hours)
6) Relative Thermal Index according UL 746B
7) Outdoor suitability test according UL 746C
8) Automotive test according ISO 16750
9) Fatigue performance according ASTM D638
Results of the aforementioned tests help to better decide on the suitability of the one or other grade to select for your application.
Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics
Greetings,
Herwig
Interested to talk with me about your polymer material selection, sustainability, and part design needs - here you can contact me
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is available for purchase here *NEW*
Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.
Literature:
[1] V. Shah: Handbook of Plastics Testing and Failure Analysis, Wiley
 |
| Major Benefits of Plastics for the Environment |
Hello and welcome to a new blog post. Today we discuss briefly the major benefits of plastics for our environment. In this post I selected nine impact factors which are in my view important and the list of benefits of plastics not only for the environment is much longer.
The following video shows a brief summary:
1) Durability: polymer based pipes are designed to last for more than 100 years. Also they reduce the overall failure rate and ensure fresh water supply to many difficult reachable regions of the world.
2) Water saver: as we mentioned water before, the production of a plastic bag consumes less than 4% of the water needed to make a paper bag.
3) Light weighting: lightweight plastic parts save around 3,000 liters of fuel over the lifetime of an average car.
4) Food waste prevention: plastics packaging increases the shelf life. In the case of bananas, wrapping them in a modified atmosphere bag extends their shelf-life by 2 to 3 days.
5) Product protection: plastics packaging helps to reduce the products which are sold loose. It has been found that this in-store waste in some cases leads to losses of 20%.
6) Resourceful in production: producing plastics uses only 4% of the world's oil production. The remaining 96% are used for transport, energy, heat or are burnt.
7) Recyclability: thermoplastics can be recycled however it is not always technically or economically possible. In general, recycling one tonne of plastic bottles saves 1.5 tonnes of Carbon emission.
8) Reduction of CO2 emissions: it is shown by several studies that plastics reduce CO2 emissions massively and fossil fuel use massively.
9) Safety: chemicals and additives in plastics are strictly regulated, tested for decades. In most cases they are only present in parts per million amounts.
Altogether we can state that plastics are part of our solution and are not the problem.
I published already several posts on how polymer impacting the environment in a positive way:
Turning thermoplastics carbon neutral
Global warming potential vs thermal properties of thermoplastics
Sustainability in plastics industry
Eco profiles of polymer resins
Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics
Greetings,
Herwig
Interested to talk with me about your polymer material selection, sustainability, and part design needs - here you can contact me
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is available for purchase here *NEW*
Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.
Literature:
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/mark-stewart-md-pb?trk=author-info__article-link
[2] https://plasticsparadox.com/
Hello and welcome back to a new blog post in this fresh year of 2023! I hope you had a successful start into this new year.
Again, materials companies were hit hard in 2022: from supply chain disruptions due to Covid lockdowns in Asia, the Ukraine conflict with its impact on engery prices, in particular Europe and global inflation continued to increase (Eurozone around 10%; North America around 9%).
Looking at the financial markets, the situation is similar. The S&P 500 finished 2022 with -19 % for the year and the NASDAQ composite decreased -35 % in 2022. The Vanguard Materials Index Fund ETF made also -11 % in 2022. Altogether, only 1 of the 11 main sectors was up double-digits (Energy sector + 58%). All the other sectors performed negatively and Communication Services had -14 % the biggest decrease.
Performance of 30 major material stocks - How did the 30 major material stock companies perform in 2022?
5 out of the 30 stocks could make gains for their shareholders (date of estimation: 02.01.2023) and this is 20 less compared to 2021. Cabot and Hexcel Corp. were in the lead with double digit gains.
 |
| Performance of 30 major material stocks 2022 |
Higher energy costs in Europe impact companies such as BASF which considers future investments outside Europe. Not only in Europe things are shaking. Globally we see shocks in geopolitics, energy and economics which accelerates the probability for a global recession. Predictions for global growth is 2.7% in 2023. This projection was done by the International Monetary Fund and would represent the weakest year for the world economy since 2001 (excluding global financial crisis 2008 and Covid pandemic 2020).
Staying focused for 2023
For sure we will see much slower growth and if a recession can be avoided, material companies will still have several challenges to face (energy prices, supply chain, to name a few).
We know that economy moves in waves and it is important to stay focused during the down-wave.
What plastics businesses can do in such times:
-build up the cash reserves and reduce debt;
-follow the old saying: "when times are good, prepare for tough times".
-keep an eye on future and mega-trends; the next up-wave is around the corner
-diversification due to several income streams
-protect the existing customer base
-continue to innovate and keep up the quality over quantity
-as a small company: find partner and make it together due to hard times by sharing certain assets and skill sets
Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics
Greetings,
Herwig
Interested to talk with me about your polymer material selection, sustainability, and part design needs - here you can contact me
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is available for purchase here *NEW*
Interested in my monthly blog posts – then subscribe here and receive my high performance polymers knowledge matrix.
Literature:
[1] https://eresearch.fidelity.com/eresearch/markets_sectors/sectors/si_performance.jhtml?tab=siperformance
[2] https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2022/11/18/why-a-global-recession-is-inevitable-in-2023?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnsqdBhCGARIsAAyjYjTXbfw9837wHG86GmChEaQo9BtO48dBNn3jwp_kVr6rw1v3ETpwiFQaAmZhEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/29/business/global-economy-2023-recession/index.html
[4] https://www.shrm.org/executive/resources/articles/pages/weathering-recession-.aspx
 |
| Find Out About Plastics - My End-Of-The-Year Review 2022 and Outlook 2023 |
Hello and welcome to my end-of-the-year review 2022 and outlook for 2023. I walk you through this year and touch briefly on all published posts.
January
In January we kicked off the blog year with an overview and definitions of sustainability in the Plastics Industry. Biron [1] identified six major areas to put the focus on when implementing a sustainability concept and creating a sustainability concept is a step-by-step progress toward the best possible sustainability in your company. We had a guest interview with Mr. Max Funck from specialty compounder PlastFormance. We learned about their highly filled compounds to enhance high conductivity (thermal, electrical) and radiation shielding. Also in January we discussed some major trends to watch for in the chemical industry and continued with the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of thermoplastics. I showed the GWP values of thermoplastics compared to their different thermal properties and transitions: Tg, heat capacity (Cp), short term temperature exposure (HDT) and long term temperature exposure (UL Yellow Card). This allows for a better assessment of the different GWP values in relation to the resin properties.
Read all posts of January 2022 here
February
In February I wrote three posts on design properties for plastics engineering: Key Electrical Properties of Selected Engineering and High Performance Polymers for E-Mobility, Selected Properties of Natural Fiber Based Polymer Compounds, and Mechanical properties of PCR, PIR, bio-based, and mass balanced plastics. Apart from the engineering data post, we discussed blockchain technology as an enabler for tracing recycling content of plastic compounds and cascade recycling as a possible way forward for plastics processing companies to ensure a proper tracing of the used polymers. In another post I picked up the six strategic principles of Mark McNeilly’s book “Sun Tzu and the art of business” and tried to apply them in today’s VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) plastics world. Another more hands-on post was a simple tool for calculating the residence time for extrusion operations.
Read all posts of February 2022 here
March
In March we discussed three considerations for optimal dimensional stability of plastics parts after processing. Polymer based parts have a dimensional stability which is not equal to that of metals. It can vary with several factors which we discuss in the following in more detail. If it is a critical part, this needs to be considered during the polymer material selection. Also we discussed an operational life-hack. We looked at a well-known cognitive bias that psychologists refer to as “survivorship bias” and how to use this information for better decision making in our daily plastics operation. Biopolymers were a topic in March too. I showed how you can use the 3P (price, performance, and processing)-triangle to select engineering biopolymers. In addition, we discussed three topics under the sustainability umbrella: bio sourcing, LCA, and certifications.
Read all posts of March 2022 here
April
In the month of April we discussed the DMA data of unfilled engineering polymers as well as reinforced engineering polymers. In general, the DMA is a thermo-analytical method that estimates the viscoelastic properties of a given material over the course of different temperatures. It steps away from a single point view toward a multipoint data view which is beneficial for polymer material selection tasks. Another topic was how to optimize the wall thickness of well- known PET bottles by using safety factors and the stress equations.
Read all posts of April 2022 here
May
In May I presented 6 major benefits of injection moulding simulation in polymer part design and material selection. In addition we discussed the water and moisture uptake of aliphatic short and long chain Polyamides as part of our “Plastic Part Design Properties for Engineers” series. In May we discussed the penguin circle which stands as a symbol for teamwork and leadership.
Read all posts of April 2022 here
June
In June, right before the summer, I presented the second episode of my Ocean Plastics - What The Media, NGOs and Others Still Not Tell You series. In Episode 2 we discussed all kinds of waste dumping and that the "out of sight, out of mind” attitude for dumping waste into our ocean is wrong. Also, blaming plastics to be the number one littering source for our oceans is wrong too. The data speaks a clear language. There is more and more ideological thinking involved in such anti-plastics topics and too less decision making based on facts. Plastics are part of our solution and are not the problem. Another topic in May was on the topic of flame retardants, starting with an overview and then discussing as an example effective flame retardants for Polyamides. In June I presented a summary of testing standards which is helpful in the material screening phase during polymer selection for your application to have a feeling which tests can be done and what standards are linked to them. Furthermore we discussed the HDT (1.82 MPa) of filled and unfilled amorphous and semi-crystalline polymers as part of the “plastic part design properties” series.
Read all posts of June 2022 here
July
In July we discussed what are the PTFE free alternatives for lubrication in friction and wear compounds. In conclusion, from an polymer material selection point of view, UHMW-PE is an alternative material for applications that need excellent sliding properties as well as excellent wear resistance. Furthermore, flame retardant properties can be achieved by mixing UHMW-PE (wt 80%) with PTFE (wt 20%). Another post focused on highly filled PP compounds as enabler materials for improved flame retardancy, cost, and functionality. Third topic in July was the CLTE of commodity polymers, mineral fillers and metals with the focus on how to control CLTE in an optimal way.
Read all posts of July 2022 here
August
In August I gave you an update on my HDPE plastic bag degradation experiment. This summer I spent some weeks in our apartment flat in Sesimbra, Portugal which by the way you can rent for your holiday as well. I used this time to check on my experiment which I started in January 2021. Furthermore I wrote three “Plastic Multipoint Design Data” posts : Specific Heat Capacity as a Function of Temperature, CLTE of Polymers as a Function of Temperature, and Thermal Conductivity of Polymers as a Function of Temperature. In August we discussed the starting point in polymer material selection. In general there are several procedures for material selection such as the Ashby methodology or my own developed funnel approach. However, all the selection processes and procedures should have the definition of the part requirements as their common starting point.
Read all posts of August 2022 here
September
In September we discussed ways to increase the Comparative Tracking Index (CTI) of thermoplastics. In general, there are polymers which more likely form a conducting carbonized path compared to other polymers. Aliphatic and semi-aromatic polymers, polyolefins, fluoropolymers, as well as polyesters show high resistance to form a conductive carbonized path. PPS on the other hand more likely forms a conducting carbonized path, combined with a low tracking resistance. Also I presented an effective way to turn thermoplastics carbon neutral or even carbon negative. In another post we uncovered the flame retardant classification according to DIN EN ISO 1043-4. In September we answered a community question on what should be the minimum transparency level required for plastic laser welding. In general, thermoplastics transmit a near-IR beam. The upper plastics layer needs to have transparency for wavelengths between 808 nm – 1064 nm. A minimum transmission rate of 5% is required, however optimal would be 30% and greater.
Read all posts of September 2022 here
October
In October I started the three part series on the important role of additives (Part 1 and 2). They enhance polymer properties for high performance applications. Furthermore I showed the processing considerations of PBT and its crystallization behavior.
Read all posts of October 2022 here
November
In November we discussed the injection molding of polymers with flame retardant (FR) and how the flow and chemical resistance of amorphous polymers can be improved. In addition I presented an overview of the chemical resistance of commodity and engineering polymers. Furthermore I showed another important multipoint and long-term data set for polymer material selection and part design: tensile creep modulus.
Read all posts of November 2022 here
December
In December I presented the third part of our plastic additives series. In this post we discussed how to improve the conductivity (thermal and electrical) of polymers by using different filler systems. Also we discussed another set of multi-point design data: the brittleness as a function of temperature for amorphous and semi-crystalline thermoplastics.
Read all posts of December 2022 here
Hello 2023
In 2023, I will continue to present posts which evolve around 3 main categories:
- Polymer material selection and applying the Polymer Selection Funnel. I aim to present on a monthly basis a selection example using my funnel methodology.
- Design properties and multi-point data for engineers (incl. eco-design for sustainability in plastics) as well as design of materials using compounding and additives.
- Leadership and strategy in plastics industry
Furthermore, I invite you all to leave topics you would like to read about in 2023 in the comment box below or leave me a short message here.
I am working to publish my “Pumping Plastics” monthly newsletter as a book in 2023. More details will follow.
Last but not least, I would like to thank all readers of my posts!!!
I hope to welcome you again next year.
I wish you happy holidays and a very happy New Year 2023!
Thank you and #findoutaboutplastics,
Greetings,
Herwig Juster
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is out - get a copy here
Hello community,
I wish all my readers a safe and happy holiday season!
Soon my annual review incl. best of 2022 as well as outlook for 2023 will be online.
Greetings and #findoutaboutplastics
Herwig
 |
| Season Greetings 2022 |
*NEW* my Polymer Material Selection book is out - get a copy here
