Sheffield Plastics Polycarbonate Flat Sheet offering light weight and break resistance
Makrolon Polycarbonate materials give you a great blend of helpful features which include temperature resistance, impact resistance and optical properties position polycarbonates between commodity plastics and engineering plastics.
Polycarbonate is a very long-lasting material. Although it offers considerable impact-resistance, it's got lower scratch-resistance and thus a hard coating is often applied to polycarbonate eye wear as well as polycarbonate exterior automotive components. The properties relating to polycarbonate are generally along the lines of those of common Acrylic materials, although polycarbonate is actually stronger, it is usable in a wider temperature range and is a bit more expensive. This plastic polymer is highly transparent to visible light and has better light transmission characteristics than many kinds of glass.
Polycarbonate has a glass transition temperature of around 150 °C (302 °F), as a result it softens gradually above this point and flows above about 300°C (572 °F). Tools are required to be held at warm to high temperatures, generally above 80 °C (176 °F) to produce strain- and reduced stress products.
Unlike most other thermoplastics, polycarbonate can undergo massive changes in basic shape without cracking or breaking. For this reason, it is sometimes processed and formed at room temperature using standard sheet metal techniques, which include forming bends with a brake. Even for sharp angle bends with a tight radius, no heating is generally necessary. This makes it useful for prototyping applications where transparent or electrically non-conductive parts are required, which should not be made from sheet metal. Remember that PMMA/Plexiglas, that is certainly similar in looks to polycarbonate, but is brittle and cannot be bent at room temperature.
The light weight of polycarbonate, in contrast to glass, has led to growth and development of electronic view screens that replace glass materials with polycarbonate, for use in mobile and portable devices. Such displays include newer e-ink and a few LCD screens, though CRT, plasma screen and other LCD technologies generally still require glass for its higher melting temperature and the ability to be etched in finer detail.
Other miscellaneous items manufactured from Polycarbonate include durable, lightweight luggage, MP3/digital audio player cases, computer cases, police riot shields, instrument panels, and blender jars. Many toys and hobby goods are made out of polycarbonate parts, e.g. fins, gyro mounts, and flybar locks for use with radio-controlled helicopters.
For use in applications exposed to weathering or UV-radiation, a special surface treatment maybe needed. This either can be a coating (e.g. for improved abrasion resistance), or as a coextrusion for enhanced weathering resistance.
The Makrolon Polycarbonate is a thermoplastic that begins as a solid plastic material in the form of small pellets. In a manufacturing process called injection molding, these small pellets are heated until they melt in to a thick liquid. This liquid polycarbonate is then rapidly injected into a mold with the empty part being the size and shape of the part you want, compressed under high pressure and cooled to form a finished product in a matter of minutes.
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