Finding The Right Plastic For New Products

When creating any new product, it is often very appealing to simply stick to what you know in terms of material. However, with technology altering and improving what can be achieved in the production of materials all the time, it may well be that what was once perfectly suitable for your needs is far from the most versatile, cost-effective or suitable option for future products.

With 50,000 grades of commercial plastics alone to choose from, and with the use of each different type of plastic likely to significantly alter what can be achieved and how effective the end result will be, there is a huge amount to bear in mind before going to market.

There are multiple ways to compare the many types of plastic on the market, and whilst doing research – reading reviews and utilising data sheets, for instance – can help, each product’s unique requirements may well affect the result in a way that is hard to ascertain from a list of performance characteristics alone.

From product failure to poor aesthetics, many different problems can be encountered when the wrong material is chosen. So when it comes to plastics, how can you choose and test the best solution, and at what stage should the material be decided upon?

When to choose

It may be appealing to design a product first and then choose a plastic afterwards to suit your needs. However, whilst this may work in a handful of instances, in most, knowing which material is right for you could significantly alter the way in which an item is designed in the first place, helping to ensure that you can get the very most from any new product from the very beginning.

As such, using data sheets to find out more about different plastics will be a very good place to start. However, from here, it will be important to use multiple sources of information to help ascertain which is right for your product, including the help and advice of those supplying the materials. Not only will those in the plastics industry be able to better guide your choices, but they may also open up other potential solutions you had previously overlooked. The experience and knowledge of suppliers is likely to be vital for any company wishing to use plastics in manufacturing and, in turn, finding the right supplier may be the most suitable first step to take if you want a product that is accurately and effectively designed from the very start.

Testing

Whilst help and advice will be invaluable, there is a certain amount of physical testing businesses should do themselves where materials are concerned. From testing the plastic to ensure it can withstand the pressures, heat or usage products are likely to experience to simply testing the actual performance of a given material, trying before you commit could help you avoid making very costly mistakes.

However, testing should not just take place prior to design work. Once you have created designs based on the potential of a given material, you will need to test out your designs to ensure you have indeed made the right choice. Those creating new products for market are likely to find that 3D printers are invaluable at this stage, allowing businesses to very quickly ascertain whether or not parts can be effectively realised using the material in question alongside initial designs.

Author Bio: Alan Holmes is a freelance writer and blogger. He regularly writes articles about engineering and the plastics industry, using sites such as AI International to keep up with all the latest industry news and developments.