The Positive Plastics feeling at SKZ
Finland-based Positive Plastics produces specifically shaped, injection-molded plastic samples. The aim is to enable product designers to make an informed material selection of ecologically positive materials based on both material data and real samples. SKZ uses these samples for customer inquiries.
Christian Deubel, Senior Engineer Injection Molding (left), and Dr. Michael Bosse, Group Manager Materials Development and Testing, discuss quality characteristics of plastics based on the pores of Positive Plastics (Photo: SKZ)
Finnish company Positive Plastics produces plastic samples to give designers a feel for the material
Digital material data containing properties and parameters expressed in mathematical-physical models and numbers, such as strength, stiffness, elasticity and flowability, offer many advantages, including for design. However, one of the biggest challenges is that it does not allow you to feel the real material. Real materials have a tangible quality that includes their actual feel, smell, appearance and texture depending on their form. This quality cannot be replicated in digital form. This can make it difficult for designers and engineers to fully understand and evaluate how materials behave in real-world applications.
To meet this challenge, the Finnish-based company Positive Plastics (www.positiveplastics.eu) provides specifically shaped, injection-molded samples. In addition to numerous different surfaces, their geometry also includes some exemplary moldings that exhibit characteristic properties during injection molding. In addition to a bending spring and a film hinge, features such as overmolding, ribbing and wall thickness jumps can also be assessed by "feeling the material."
The aim of Positive Plastics is to enable designers to make informed material choices of environmentally positive materials. All plastics in the kit have a smaller environmental footprint than petro-based alternatives. They are made of post-consumer or post-industrial plastics, are biobased or biocomposites, or they represent an ecological mass balance. This supports the plastics industry in the transfer to a circular economy.
At SKZ, the groups injection molding and material development are currently also using the samples from Positive Plastics for customer inquiries and to exchange information on questions of quality, process optimization or in terms of feasibility studies with the question: "Can this also be done with plastics?"
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