(Newswire.net — March 7, 2014) Anaheim, CA — Nylon is one of the most commonly used plastics, with uses from women’s stockings to bearings. Nylon is used to make engineering products like wear strip to tough rope. Nylon is one of those “Wonder” materials.
Dupont Invented Nylon Plastic
Nylon was first produced on February 28, 1935 by Wallace Carothers working for DuPont. Invented during World War II, Nylon helped turn the tide of a war. Silk was in short supply and was used to make parachutes, which meant they needed a material to replace silk. Enter nylon, it replaced silk as the main material for items such as parachutes, tents, and ponchos.
Nylon was the perfect replacement for silk in military applications, where there was a need for more rugged materials. Nylon could outperform silk in almost all applications, and did not need to be imported. Nylon could also be reprocessed, which was a major advantage during a war where supplies are limited. Women’s Nylon stockings would wear out, and once they did they could recycle them to form other products like parachutes.
The Nylon proved to be an extremely easy material to produce in various shapes and sizes. The development of Cast Nylon Type 6 opened the door wider to huge sizes and shapes. Materials could be cast in very large sheet or block, very large diameter and a huge range of tube or tubular bar. Blocks of up to 12″ thick, rod to 30″ diameter and tube with outside diameter of 36″ are not uncommon. Sheaves or large pulleys for cranes are commonly made with Nylon, and can measure 60″ diameter with a thickness of 8″. The Nylon sheaves don’t require the maintenance and grease that metal sheaves require.
Nylon 6 and Nylon 6/6 Are Self Lubricating
Some of the key physical characteristics of nylon are: considered internally lubricated, it can be almost any color including clear, it can be cast or extruded, it can be filled with different additives for improved properties, and it has a low coefficient of friction. Nylon has the amazing ability to self lubricate make it a perfect plastic for any type of wear application. It works great as bearings and rollers in mechanical applications because of its ability to reduce friction as well as make machines less noisy. Nylon has a very high strength to weight ratio, making it perform dramatically better than metals at a much reduced weight. Nylon melts before it burns, which is ideal when recycling.
Excellent wear resistance
Nylon is a great engineering plastic. It has a wide use in engineering. It can be made into chain guides, sprockets, gears, and wear strips, to name a few. Since it is internally lubricated, it does not need to be maintained as regularly as metals or other materials, and avoids the messy grease used with metal parts. Nylon also has the ability to be heavily modified with fillers. The reason nylon has such a great range of modification is in the way it is made. Nylon is made through a condensation reaction between diamines and dibasic acids, which produces a nylon salt.
The two numbers (The 6,6 in Nylon 6/6 or Nylon 6/12) represent the mix ratio of materials. Different mixes yields different versions of nylon. Nylon also has excellent fatigue properties, high impact and mechanical strength, as well as good chemical resistance. Dupont hit a home run with the invention of Nylon resin.
Aside from engineering and winning a war, nylon also helped to revolutionize music. Before nylon, strings were made of a material called catgut, basically made from guts of animals, mostly cattle. Now strings are made of nylon or a nylon base and metal wrapped. Strings made of nylon last longer, and have better sound than their catgut partners.
Nylon Sheet and Rod Outperform Other Plastics
Nylon is an extremely common mechanical or engineering grade plastic, and can be produced in one of the largest range of sizes of any plastic material. From spaghetti sized rod to cast round rod over 30″ in diameter, and sheets from .032″ to Cast Nylon plate over 8.0″ thick, Nylon will fit your needs. Because it is so versatile, it is able to be used in a wide range of products. It helped us to win a world war, and at the same time it helped make some of our common items better. Nylon can be used as a fabric, sheet, rod, and tube. What can nylon do for you?
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