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Processing Made Easy with Innovative Low-Viscosity HNBR Polymers

Tuesday, October 12, 2010: 10:20 AM
Mark Jones, Zeon Chemicals L. P., Louisville, KY and Andy Anderson, Application Development, Zeon Chemicals L. P., Louisville, KY
Processing Made Easy With Innovative Low-Viscosity HNBR Polymers

The high performance properties of HNBR compounds provide exceptional service in applications where extreme heat and fluid resistance are required.  These applications have been well documented.  Unfortunately these compounds, on occasion, have proven difficult to process as a result of the high viscosity of the HNBR polymer.  This can make injection molding of these compounds difficult at best.  Often this limits the production of parts made from these compounds to the less efficient and typically more costly compression and transfer molding processes.  Zeon Chemicals has developed the next generation of Easy Processing HNBR elastomers that provide the ability to fine tune HNBR compound to meet the difficult processing requirements of injection molding.  This improvement in compound processability lends itself to the injection molding process therefore results in improved productivity and cost efficiencies.  While being easy to process these polymers maintain very similar end-use performance characteristics when compared to standard HNBR grades.  These new polymers are not only well suited to injection molding but to transfer, compression molding operations.  Benefits from these polymers can also be seen in extrusion and calendaring processes. 

This work will demonstrate, in actual applications work, that these next generation HNBR elastomers have the required processing characteristics to achieve improve productivity, while maintain the physical properties and exceptional aging characteristics that HNBR polymers are noted for.