PTS launches new PP/ABS Blend with focus on Hard/Soft combinations
Material challenge for the "Dragon Castle"
TPE gives you wings
For the latest highlight of PLAYMOBIL, the Great Dragon Castle, developers had to meet multiple challenges. One of those was the dragon, with a total of 8 injection moulding tools, of which 4 had to be designed for multi-component injection moulding.
To meet current safety regulations, parts of the dragon's body that could potentially cause injuries, had to be "defused" by the use of thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs).
But the selection of the materials was just not that simple. Since the body of the dragon is made of ABS, the soft materials for the spiky back and the claws of the dragon, had to be adhesion-modified for this thermoplastic material.
The PLAYMOBIL developers found the right answers at PTS MARKETING- & Vertriebs - GmbH in Adelshofen-Tauberzell, who got the adhesion-modified grades of the PTS-THERMOFLEX-A1/B family (TPS) in their portfolio.
Due to the high polarity of this material family, the adhesion to ABS is very high, but in case of the dragon wing, the large area in contact with the mould led to severe demoulding problems. On top of this, the soft component had to be highly transparent to implement the colour effects, required by the PLAYMOBIL design department.
After checking all technical properties Robert Banker, technical director at PLAYMOBIL gave the green light to try out a previously unknown hard/soft combination from PTS.
The materials specialists from Adelshofen developed an ABS-blend for the rigid elements of the wings (brandname PTS-CREABLEND-F) with adhesion to all standard TPS-grades (SEBS) and TPV-grades (EPDM/PP).For the soft parts of the wings, a highly transparent TPS-grade
(PTS-THERMOFLEX) with a hardness of approx. 85 ShA was selected. The choice of a non-polar material that is by nature easy-to-process, was crucial to allow an automated production.
PTS-CREABLEND-F shows low warpage, high dimensional stability and chemical resistance. In simplified terms, this material combines the dimensional stability of ABS with the chemical resistance of Polypropylen and this should as well be interesting for the automotive industry and the electric appliances industry.
Furthermore, PTS-CREABLEND-F complies with all relevant provisions for food contact and consequently as well with the increasingly restrictive regulations at PLAYMOBIL. For the wings of the PLAYMOBIL dragon, a new material combination of a special ABS-blend and a TPS is used.
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