Improving Your Products: Take Advantage of Talc-Filled Polypropylene

Injection Molding

HQC serves you with molding, ideas and solutions for plastics with fillers and additives

HQC works extensively with products containing polypropylene (PP), a thermoplastic polymer in items such as injection-molded parts, packaging and containers. Because it is a commodity plastic with low weight and density, its uses can remain limited without plastic fillers and additives that make it more substantial.

One such plastic filler/additive is talc, a water-repellent, chemically inert mineral that consists of a layer or sheet of brucite between two sheets of silica.

Adding talc to PP notably enhances its properties, including greater stiffness/rigidity; higher impact strength (particularly at sub-zero temperatures); better heat, creep and chemical resistance; and especially increased dimensional stability, even after molding.

Talc-filled polypropylene also helps reduce the sink marks in a part. Sink marks occur anytime you have a thick cross-section of material with a corresponding thinner cross-section next to it. The thicker part shrinks while cooling and causes the indentation. Sink marks affect both a part’s appearance and its functionality.

Talc filler in plastics allows them to be used in much wider range of applications. Just a few popular markets we serve at HQC include:

• pharmaceutical containers and packaging
• office supplies and furniture
• under-the-hood automotive covers and parts
• household appliances
• medical devices
• engineering plastics

We anticipate talc-filled PP manufacturers will soon find a growing audience in food packaging as well.

HQC innovation leads to yet other ways you can include talc in plastics to gain an edge in production. We can create an effective overlay between an engineering-grade material and the PP. The talc filler/additive upgrades the plastic enough to let you replace an expensive engineering part such as you’d find in automotive applications.

We can also overmold soft-touch materials on talc-filled polypropylene parts as an asset for medical devices.

In addition, because talc-filled polypropylene is a commodity resin, your cost is less. It can often further lower expenses because we can run quicker cycles with it, particularly for pieces with thicker cross-sections. With the talc filler in the plastic, the parts in the mold cool faster than non-filled materials do. We can produce more parts per hour for you, which saves on production.

Beyond proficient injection molding of plastics with talc filler/additive, HQC offers your business original ways to use talc-filled polypropylene to your product’s advantage. Contact us at (630) 820-5550 to learn even more about our capabilities for talc-filled PP manufacturers.