Can High Impact Styrene Sheet Replace ABS In The Jianghu?

At present, the purchase cost of home appliance industry is more and more high. In order to reduce the purchase cost, many home appliance enterprises have put forward various cost reduction schemes, including replacing ABS with high impact styrene sheet to produce plastic parts.

The main reason is that the purchase price of high impact styrene sheet is far lower than that of ABS, and high impact styrene sheet and ABS have the same shrinkage, and the plastic parts produced have basically the same appearance of ABS. Therefore, in the case of no need to modify the injection mold, the plastic parts of high impact styrene sheet can be produced directly with the mold that produces ABS parts. Therefore, many manufacturers hope to replace ABS with high impact styrene sheet to produce plastic parts, so as to reduce the purchase cost of the company.

The raw materials of high impact styrene sheet are almost styrene. Compared with ABS composed of three kinds of raw materials, it is easier for purchasing enterprises to predict the price, which is conducive to the risk control of enterprises. Styrene is the main raw material of ABS and high impact styrene sheet, accounting for 61% and 92% of ABS and high impact styrene sheet respectively. Butadiene accounts for 17% of ABS raw materials, and cis-1-polybutadiene rubber accounts for 8% of high impact styrene sheet raw materials. Cis-1-polybutadiene rubber, also known as polybutadiene rubber, is made of 100% butadiene, so butadiene and these two products are also closely linked, and the rising and falling market of butadiene has a crucial impact on the price of ABS. Compared with high impact styrene sheet, the raw material composition of ABS is more complex, the influencing factors are more, and the cost control is more difficult.

Can high impact styrene sheet replace ABS in the Jianghu?

However, we believe that although high impact styrene sheet and ABS have certain similarity in physical properties, they can be used in air conditioning, washing machines, refrigerators, electric vehicles, toys, stationery and other fields. However, ABS can also be used in motorcycles, vacuum cleaners, batteries and other products with high requirements for raw materials. High impact styrene sheet can only be used for packaging. Their performance is still different, so high impact styrene sheet can not replace ABS in the Jianghu.

The biggest reason why high impact styrene sheet will replace ABS is the cost. Downstream enterprises pursue cost performance. If it is only for some low-end applications, the performance requirements for plastic materials are not so high, the merchants will naturally choose cheaper raw materials. If it is some high-end applications, the performance of high impact styrene sheet can not meet the requirements, even if it is cheaper, it can not replace ABS. Therefore, the replacement of raw materials must take into account the balance between performance and cost.

Performance difference between high impact styrene sheet and ABS

(1) Except that the bending modulus of high impact styrene sheet and ABS is close to each other, the performance of high impact styrene sheet is far lower than that of ABS, especially the impact strength. After aging for more than 240h, the impact strength of high impact styrene sheet is less than 5kj / m2, only 1 / 4 of ABS. The data in daily application shows that high impact styrene sheet parts are brittle and easy to break.

(2) The tensile strength, bending strength and bending modulus of high impact styrene sheet changed little after aging, but the impact strength changed a lot. The impact strength of high impact styrene sheet before aging was 10.188kj/m2. After aging for 240 hours and 400 hours, the impact strength was 4.674 and 4.56kj/m2, respectively, which were 45.9% and 44.7% before and more than half after aging. The impact strength is 4.6kj/m2 after aging for 240h.

Compared with ABS, it is easier to age, resulting in a significant decrease in impact strength. When applied to household appliances, the parts produced by high impact styrene sheet can achieve the same effect as ABS parts at the beginning of use, but with the extension of use time, or repeatedly affected by high temperature and low temperature, the aging speed of high impact styrene sheet is much faster than ABS, and it is easy to break, resulting in the decline of service life of products.

(3) The test shows that high impact styrene sheet parts are not suitable for daily household appliances, such as rice cookers, electric kettles and other high-temperature products. Moreover, in the areas with high temperature in the south, the plastic parts produced by high impact styrene sheet are easy to age in the outdoor with high temperature, which is not suitable for long-term use.