Injection Molding of Thermoplastics

Abstract

Most thermoplastics begin with ‘poly’ and then this term, which means ‘many’ is followed by the old fashioned name for the monomer from which the plastic is derived i.e the name is source-based. Because of this practice we get names such as polystyrene and polyethylene for homopolymers. When the plastics material has more than one word in the name, parentheses, or brackets, may be put around the words so that we get poly (vinyl chloride). However this practice is not universal and so we also meet the same term without the brackets i.e. polyvinyl chloride. Source-based nomenclature is not however, universally used and so names such as ‘acetals’ and ‘cellulosics’ are also encountered. Other, more logical systems of nomenclature have been proposed but as yet, they have not been adopted,