Compounding

Abstract

Up to this point, we have referred to plastics in their basic resin form. Obviously, in actual practice, many resins involve the addition of various chemicals and additives to make them tougher (impact modifiers), rigid (reinforcing fibers), more flexible (plasticizers), more resistant to ultraviolet (stabilizers), colorful (colorants), and so on. Most of these additives are added to the resin by various compounding techniques, either at the resin supplier level or by specialists in compounding or, as has been the more recent case, by plastics processors themselves. This chapter presents a brief review of compounding.