Putting the emphasis on fast cure

Düsseldorf, Germany — Medical molders need liquid silicone rubber materials that cure quickly and at lower temperatures. Dow Performance Silicones featured the novel, innovative elastomers at two recent presentations.

Stéphane Cornelis, responsible for medical application engineering and technical service at Dow Performance Silicones in Seneffe, Belgium, spoke Nov. 14 about development and benchmark evaluation of the new QP1-33XX series medical quality LSR.

The material, launched at the Compamed trade fair in Düsseldorf, cures well below 140° C, which enables molders to use thermally sensitive additives and to do two-component molding of LSR with thermoplastics with lower heat resistance than glass-fiber-reinforced nylon or polybutylene terephthlate, which are the plastics most frequently used for LSR/thermoplastic molding.

In a separate Dow Performance Silicones presentation at the Nov. 15 Compamed suppliers forum, Pennadam Sivanand, EMEA manager in Seneffe medical technology development, application engineering and technical service, talked about another new low-temperature and fast-cure Dow material, the QP1-5040 self-adhesive (SA) Shore A40 hardness medical-grade LSR.

Sivanand illustrated the material's low-temperature cure by showing the same 100° C cure profile chart for QP1-3350 as Cornelis had done the previous day — the one with up to 133 seconds faster cure than competitors' LSR grades.

Sivanand said medical industry OEMs seek biocompatible elastomer solutions that withstand disinfection requirements and can be molded with fast cycle times. He said attractiveness of the new SA LSR is due to ability to eliminate mechanical interlocking and primers, with the higher efficiency and faster molding cycle time resulting in cost reduction.

See a complete version of this story on LSR World.