[TPE material] What material is TPE? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

The English name of TPE is Thermoplastic Elastomer. TPE is collectively referred to as thermoplastic elastomer. It is a soft rubber material that can be processed and molded by general thermoplastic molding machine. The appearance of TPE is the round particles with the color of TPE, black, translucent or transparent. TPE materials can be processed by injection molding, extrusion, blow molding, salivation, pouring and other methods. TPE is a material with high elasticity, high strength and high resilience of rubber, and has the characteristics of injection molding. It is environment-friendly, non-toxic and safe, with a wide range of hardness, excellent colorability, soft touch, weather resistance, fatigue resistance and temperature resistance, excellent processing performance, without vulcanization, and can be recycled to reduce costs. It can be used for secondary injection molding, coated and bonded with PP, PE, PC, PS, ABS and other base materials, or can be formed separately. In this industry, some friends will say that TPE is also TPR. TPE is confused with TPR. TPE is a blend modified material based on SEBS, and the modified material based on SBS is called TPR. It is only slightly different in terms of terms. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, most people like to call it TPR, while in the mainland, most people like to call it TPE. In fact, TPE and TPR are just different terms for thermoplastic elastomer materials. Advantages of TPE material: 1. Easy processing, no need for vulcanization, greatly improved production efficiency and short molding cycle.% It is an ideal material to replace rubber and silica gel for recycling and reducing costs. 3. It has stable properties, good temperature resistance (operating temperature range - 50-100 ℃), aging resistance, chemical resistance and solvent resistance.

TPE, no matter what monomer or blend system, is generally non-toxic. No bisphenol A (BPA), no phthalate PAES, no polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHS, no nonylphenol NP, no organotin, heavy metals, etc. However, soft PVC with plasticizers needs to be treated with caution. PVC with phthalate plasticizers is toxic. In addition, its stabilizer should also consider whether the content of heavy metals exceeds the standard. Soft PVC is generally discussed outside the scope of TPE, but because of its elastic and plastic properties, it also has the universal characteristics of thermoplastic elastomer TPE. Therefore, soft PVC is classified as a large TPE frame above.