Usually, children’s toys are made of a variety of materials, including wooden, cloth, plush, metal, and plastic. However, plastic-based toys are widely used for various good reasons.
Among the most used plastics are polypropylene and polyethylene. The following is our introduction to the following commonly used plastic materials.
- Polypropylene (PP)
- Polyethylene （PE）
- Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene(ABS)
- Polystyrene (PS)
Polypropylene (PP)
Polypropylene is a white wax-like material with a transparent and light appearance.
It has chemical resistance, heat resistance, electrical insulation, high strength mechanical properties, and good high abrasion resistance processing properties.
All of them led to the rapid development of polypropylene since its introduction in many fields such as machinery, automobiles, electronics and electrical appliances, construction, textiles, packaging, agriculture, forestry, fishery, and the food industry.
Polypropylene has good mechanical properties and can be manufactured directly or modified to make various mechanical equipment parts, such as industrial pipes, agricultural water pipes, motor fans, infrastructure templates, etc.
Modified polypropylene can be further molded into bumpers, scuff bars, car steering wheels, and instrument panels. and interior decorative parts, etc. It greatly reduces the weight of the body to achieve the purpose of saving energy, making PP the most used plastic material for ride-on cars.
Polyethylene （PE）
Polyethylene is tasteless, odorless, and non-toxic, with a lusterless surface, and milky white wax-like particles. It is insoluble in water and slightly soluble in hydrocarbons, etc.
It is resistant to most acids and bases, has low water absorption, remains flexible at low temperatures, and has high electrical insulation properties.
PE is used in the production of film products, hollow containers of various sizes for daily necessities and industrial use, pipes, calendaring and ligature tapes for packaging, ropes, and cables, fishing nets and woven fibers, wires, and cables, etc.
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene(ABS)
The three letters stand for “acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene”. Acrylonitrile gives ABS resin chemical stability, oil resistance, stiffness, and hardness; butadiene improves its toughness, impact, and cold resistance; and styrene gives it good dielectric properties and good processability.
This kind of raw material is easy to get, offers good comprehensive performance, cheap, versatile “tough, hard, rigid” material. It is widely used in machinery, electrical, textile, automobile, aircraft, ship, children’s car toys, and other industries.
The dimensional stability of this material is good, and the size of the base particles can be kept highly consistent. At the same time, ABS has high hardness and toughness, even in low temperatures; hence, it will not become brittle (even at a low-temperature resistance of -40°). ABS is also widely used in the ride-on cars industry.
Polystyrene (PS)
PS, which stands for Polystyrene, is a class of plastics including styrene groups in the macromolecular chain. The main varieties include ordinary polystyrene (GPPS), high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), EPS, metallocene polystyrene (SPS), etc. It is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
PS is a relatively old plastic, and its production process is relatively complete. PS has good transparency (light transmission of 88%-92%) and surface gloss, easy to dye, has high hardness, and has good rigidity.
In addition, there are good water resistance, chemical resistance, and processing flow properties. Its main disadvantages are brittle, low impact strength, prone to stress cracking, poor heat resistance, etc.
From a broad perspective, PS is widely used in the optical industry, and the main reason is because of its high light transmission.
From a small perspective, the main uses are as follows.
- Electronic appliances: It can be used in the manufacture of televisions, tape recorders, and a variety of electrical instrument parts, shells, high-frequency capacitors, etc.
- Construction: This material is used in the production of transparent parts of public buildings, optical instruments, and transparent models, such as lampshades, instrument cover shells, packaging containers, etc.
- Everyday use: combs, boxes, toothbrush handles, ballpoint pen sticks, learning utensils, children’s toys, etc.
- Other aspects: It can also be used for foam production of shockproof, sound insulation, thermal insulation, sandwich structure materials, refrigerators, trains, boats, aircraft, etc. Manufacturers can also use them as heat insulation, sound insulation, and to make life preservers, etc.
The above are widely used plastics to manufacture toys. Contact us to learn more about these raw materials, and we’ll be happy to communicate with you.