The Diverse Applications of Molding Plastic
Polyethylene is one of the most common plastics that you come in contact with on a day to day basis. It is probably the plastic covering your clothes when they are washed, and it can be found in many food containers. But where did this ubiquitous product come from? And how was it created for the first time?
The first step in the creation of polyethylene is to create a carbon chain. This can be done by heating up coal and adding hydrocarbons. When this happens, you get lots of ethylene molecules floating around. – Next, that molecule must transform into an olefin molecule by undergoing polymerization reactions with itself or other olefins like propylene and butadiene. This reaction requires heat because it needs help from a catalyst to happen at any appreciable rate
Finally, as they are heated under pressure, these long chains will randomly fuse together through fusion reactions until it forms one big mass called “polymer.” Polypropylene is then recrystallized for purification before being processed into plastic.
Final result is a plastic mass which can be molded into any shape at high temperatures.
Optimal temperatures for plastic molding are anywhere between 266 and 308 Fahrenheit degrees.
Such molded plastic you can use for plastics manufacturing, for transportation and packaging materials.
Molded plastic is used in many industries from food to industrial machinery.
Specifically, polyethylene has been used extensively as siding material on new construction homes since it was first introduced by the Dow Chemical Company in 1954. Such a development allowed builders to be able to construct houses much faster than before because they no longer had to paint or stain exterior surfaces of wood-framed buildings with tar pitch which took time and effort but now only needed one coat of painted polyethylene instead. The idea behind this innovation came from the observation that when discarding water after washing clothes outside wringing machines would often produce long strands of synthetic fibers called “lint.”