Plastics processing

Most tasks in plastics processing can be solved with standard material. The interesting ones cannot.

When a part needs a property that no standard grade offers – or several properties that contradict one another – we adjust the material accordingly. That has been our work since 1971: compounds that fit a specific application, rather than a grade that fits 80 per cent of it.

When a custom compound is worth it

• a standard grade meets one of your requirements but not all of them
• you are dealing with scrap, surface defects or demoulding problems
• the material has to withstand particular media, temperatures or weathering
• you want to eliminate a processing step
• your previous supplier has discontinued the grade

The reverse also applies: where a standard grade works properly, we will advise against it. A custom compound ties you to one supplier – there should be a good reason for that.

The trade-off is the actual work

Hardness, flow behaviour, temperature resistance, surface quality, media compatibility, colouring – each of these properties can be adjusted. Hardly any of them on its own.

Making a material softer changes its flow behaviour. Better flow behaviour can cost strength. This is why every project starts with the question of what really matters to you – and where you have room to move.

That judgement cannot be read from a data sheet. It comes from experience with comparable cases.

Advice before the quotation

Many of our customers come to us with a problem rather than an order: parts that will not release cleanly from the mould, surfaces that are not right, a joint that does not hold.

Often the solution does not lie in the compound at all, but in the process or in a processing aid. We will tell you that too – a material sold that does not solve your problem is of no use to either of us.

How a project runs

1. Define the requirement
What does the material have to do, in which process is it used, and what loads will the part face later?

2. Proposal
We propose a formulation – or an existing grade, if that is sufficient.

3. Trial batch
You test under your own conditions, on your own equipment, with your own tooling.

4. Adjustment
What works in the laboratory does not always work in series production. We adjust until it does.

5. Series
The approved formulation stays documented and reproducible.

Get in touch

Describe your application and where it currently stands. You will get an assessment of whether and how it can be solved – and, on request, a trial batch to test.

GEPOFLEX – our TPE compounds
GEPOFLEX SE / SES – processing aids

Send an enquiry
Request a call back
Phone: +49 2428 902028