Flexibility and Strength: Performance Plastics Ltd. and Nylon Offer You Both

Nylon might not always be the first material that comes to mind when you think about making products for compressors and pumps, or military and defense applications … unless you’re working with Performance Plastics Ltd.

The world’s first commercially successful version of nylon was created in 1935. Over the decades, it proved to be a lightweight, heavy-duty industrial and engineering plastic replacement for metals that was resistant to both heat and corrosive chemicals. Performance Plastics sees nylon as a fantastic material that offers excellent flexure and bending fatigue strength, which makes it ideal for parts that undergo intermittent loading. With wear resistance far greater than many metals and other thermoplastics and a low coefficient of friction, nylon is ideally suited for use in slides, bearings and other devices that must stand up to high levels of motion and wear.

Today, a wide range of nylon resin formulations and combinations with other polymers are available, as well as glass-, carbon-, and mineral-reinforced versions. For example, Minlon® mineral-reinforced nylon provides greater dimensional stability and creep resistance than unreinforced nylon, and lower warpage than glass-reinforced nylon. As a result, it is popular for use in compressor valves and big industrial parts, as well as in demanding automotive applications.

Performance Plastics has seen nylon’s applications grow to include a range of fluid handling pumps to move water, acids, lubricants, solvents, chemicals, and fuels in automotive, military and aerospace environments. Although pump makers traditionally used various metals for pump housings, shaft guides, impellers, seals, bushings and other elements, the desire to reduce pump weight and material and processing costs has led many to opt for various nylon formulations instead. In fact, Performance Plastics can use nylon to offer pump makers a combination of physical strength, wear resistance, self-lubrication, and high cost-effectiveness.

Choosing the optimal nylon resin for a pump application depends on several factors, including the levels of pressure, temperature, and speed involved. In addition, the abrasiveness of the liquids or slurries involved, the degree of contamination that can be tolerated, and projected uses for the pump must also be considered.

Nylon’s toughness and elongation properties make it suitable for designs that involve snap-fits or press-fits. Injection-molded nylon parts from Performance Plastics are well-suited to secondary machining processes such as turning, drilling, tapping and grinding, as well as ultrasonic insertion, ultrasonic welding, pad printing, and assembly.

To discover how Performance Plastics is partnering with world-class polymer scientists and industry leading material suppliers to delivery nylon solutions, visit our website at https://performanceplastics.com or contact Rich Reed, our Vice President of Sales and Marketing, at (513) 321-8404 or [email protected].