Development of high gloss plastic for injection molding by utilizing wollastonite(CaSiO₃) and talc fillers

Abstract

The gloss of plastic products is an important factor with which customers rapidly and directly decide the value of product. In general, these high-gloss plastic molded parts are produced through the injection molding of glass fiber-added plastic resin using a high temperature mold with the fine surfaces like glass. However, making the mold temperature higher causes the cooling time of injection molding longer, and the prolongation of cooling time leads to the extension of whole cycle of injection molding process. In order to resolve this problem, we developed a resin which makes the high-gloss injection modeling possible at low mold temperature by replacing conventional glass fiber filler with wollastonite filler. The tensile strength, flexural strain, impact strength, flow rate, gloss level and so on of the developed resin were tested with respect to the content of wollastonite. The results show that most of the properties except for the flow rate and gloss level are reduced in the newly developed resin. However, the decline in these properties was not enough to limit the use of new resins. In the gloss level test, as for the equal gloss of injection molded parts, the mold temperature for the developed resin was 30 °C lower than the mold temperature for the conventional resin. The difference of gloss between two injection molded parts using two different resins has been confirmed from the surface inspection of injection molded parts by SEM (scanning electron microscope).