Many plastics are too brittle to be used successfully as construction material without including reinforcing additives. In order to obtain useful plastics with specific properties, layers of paper or cotton fabric are soaked in resins and heated under pressure. The resin then hardens and connects the layers to a shape that, unlike thermoplastics, cannot be 'melted back' after curing.
In the above manner, thermosetting plastics with reinforcements are created. Such as phenolic resin with paper or fabric layers. These thermosetting plastic materials have a very high compressive strength, good electrical insulating properties (paper) and a low coefficient of expansion. In particular, the cotton fabric reinforced version is also very wear-resistant.
Unique features
- Very high mechanical strength (fabric)
- High wear resistance (fabric)
- High compressive strength (fabric/paper)
- Good electrically insulating (paper)
- Weatherproof (paper)
Applications
- Heavily loaded gears. pulleys (fabric)
- Scraper strips, clamping blocks (fabric)
- Slip and wear strips (fabric)
- Electronic sector insulating material (paper)
- Mechanical precision parts (paper)
Machining options
- Water jet cutting
- Laser beam cutting
- Gluing
- Welding
- Warm bending
- Cold bending
- Thermoforming
- Yes
- Not in all cases
- No
