Plastic & Silicone
CIPEM has a wide offer of Silicone Rubber Parts. Silicone and rubber are both elastomers.
Silicone is a polymer containing silicon, together with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Silicone and rubber can both be found in a wide variety of products: automotive applications, electronics, medical devices and implants, and in-home repair and
hardware with products such as silicone sealants. The material choice depends on
the client’s needs.
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Silicone vs Plastic
Silicone and plastic are two good options depending on the specificities of the products. Silicone has many pros: it is durable and more ocean-friendly than plastic. It lasts longer and stands up better against heat and cold than plastics. It’s safer for consumer products with no estrogen-mimicking toxins like BPA. It is odorless, hypoallergenic, and has no open pores to harbor harmful bacteria.
Rubber
This material, unlike silicone, is not toxic and therefore can be used for home appliances, medical parts, and electronics products.
Silicone
This material is mainly used for automotive parts, heavy machinery, and industrial equipment thanks to its wear resistance, dielectricity and anti-corrosion properties.
Raw Materials Grade
General
Food
Flame Retardant
Medical
There are as many as 12 different scales depending on the intended use, and each scale
results in a value between 0 and 100. Higher values indicate higher hardness and vice
versa. However, only two of these scales are most commonly used for measuring the
hardness of rubber compounds – A scale for softer ones and D scale for harder ones.
CIPEM offers Silicone Shore and Rubber Shore from A 25 to A 80 (from soft to hard
compounds).
How to mix colors for a multi-color keypad?
By using pigment mixed with raw materials. The machine used for color mixing is called
a Rubber Mixing Mill.
Coloring
Coloring is a costly solution but offers unlimited custom possibilities.
Overmolding
Overmolding creates a three-color keyboard by molding colored keys with a black body using a secondary tool.
Do you need Silicone Parts?
Any questions?
There is an ICAPE Group team close to you and your business. All around the world, our business units are staffed with native experts available to answer all your questions. Contact us today!
