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Need someone to injection mold fluoropolymers, highly filled PEE K, Torlon, or Ultem in complex shapes, tight tolerances, multiple cavities, and high volumes? “We love doing this,” says Tom Mendel, president of Performance Plastics Ltd. (PPL) in Cincinnati. “We’re not for everybody.

Fiber-reinforced and mineral-filled compounds are not always compatible with use in dynamic applications, where parts slide, rotate, pivot, or move across each other. "When a glass-filled part rubs against a metal surface or even a similar glass-filled surface, rapid abrasion takes place," says George Osterhout, v.p. of Dimension Bond, a Chicago-based supplier of a specialized coating service that can address this problem."The reason for the abrasion is minute ends of the fiber reinforcing materials protruding from the surface of the filled part," adds Osterhout.

Thermoformers may find new opportunities in higher-performance applications with the arrival of thin-gauge PPS sheet from Penn Fibre Plastics (PFP). Highly crystalline PPS has until now resisted extrusion at less than 0.25-in. thickness due to its poor melt strength and the resulting sheet’s tendency toward brittleness.

Sophisticated machinery, more engineering-grade materials, and more challenging applications are broadening the field for rotomolding.

GE Plastics to Buy Compounder LNPGE Plastics, Pittsfield, Mass., has agreed with Kawasaki Steel Corp. of Japan to acquire Kawasaki's LNP Engineering Plastics 911������, based in Exton, Pa.

BFGoodrich to Sell Plastics BusinessBFGoodrich Co., Charlotte, N.C., has agreed to sell its Performance Materials 911������ to an investor group led by AEA Investors Inc. and including DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and DB Capital Partners (an affiliate of Deutsche Bank AG). The sale includes BFG’s Estane TPU, Estaloc reinforced TPU, TempRite CPVC, Telene DCPD-based RIM resins, and Stat-Rite antistatic polymers.

A troubleshooting timeline is essential to help you quickly identify problems and their causes. Here we'll describe such a timeline and how to use it to solve one common problem—melt fracture in tube and profile extrusion.

Although the worst may be over in soaring oil and natural-gas prices, recent hikes are still percolating through the petrochemical derivatives supply chain. So there’s no slowdown in commodity-resin price hikes, and engineering resins are going up too—some of them for the first time in more than two years.

Volatile energy and petrochemical feedstock prices, unsettled by events in Venezuela and the Middle East, are having a predictable effect on resin prices. Price hikes in almost all resins are coming thick and fast, making it hard to keep track of current market prices.

Moderating feedstock costs, slack domestic demand, and slumping exports are putting the brakes on price hikes for most commodity resins.