MAKING THE MOST OF PLASTICS IN YOUR COLLECTION

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MAKING THE MOST OF PLASTICS IN YOUR COLLECTION

• Workshop organised by the Plastics SSN Steering
  Group in partnership with Modern Materials in
  Collections Scotland

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Milestones in the development and use of plastics

• Colin S. Hindle CEng CSci FIMMM
• Senior Member of the Society of Plastics Engineers

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Plastics what are they?

• Plastic ('plaestik) n. 1. any one of a large
  number of synthetic usually organic materials
  that have a polymeric structure and can be
  moulded when soft and then set, esp. such a
  material in a finished state containing
  plasticizer, stabilizer, filler, pigments, etc.
  Plastics are classified as thermosetting (such as
  Bakelite) or thermoplastic (such as PVC) and are
  used in the manufacture of many articles and in
  coatings, artificial fibres, etc.

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Plastics what are they?

• Compare resin (sense 2). adj. 2. made of
  plastic. 3. easily influenced impressionable
  the plastic minds of children. 4. capable of
  being moulded or formed. 5. Fine arts. a. of or
  relating to moulding or modelling the plastic
  arts. b. produced or apparently produced by
  moulding the plastic draperies of Giotto's
  figures. 6. having the power to form or
  influence the plastic forces of the imagination.
  7. Biology. of or relating to any formative
  process able to change, develop, or grow
  plastic tissues. 8. of or relating to plastic
  surgery. 9. Slang. superficially attractive yet
  unoriginal or artificial plastic food. C17
  from Latin plasticus relating to moulding, from
  Greek plastikos, from plassein to form
  'plastically adv.

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Plastics what are they?

• Compare resin (sense 2). adj. 2. made of
  plastic. 3. easily influenced impressionable
  the plastic minds of children. 4. capable of
  being moulded or formed. 5. Fine arts. a. of or
  relating to moulding or modelling the plastic
  arts. b. produced or apparently produced by
  moulding the plastic draperies of Giotto's
  figures. 6. having the power to form or
  influence the plastic forces of the imagination.
  7. Biology. of or relating to any formative
  process able to change, develop, or grow
  plastic tissues. 8. of or relating to plastic
  surgery. 9. Slang. superficially attractive yet
  unoriginal or artificial plastic food. C17
  from Latin plasticus relating to moulding, from
  Greek plastikos, from plassein to form
  'plastically adv.

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Horn natural plastic

• Horn has been used for generations to make useful
  food containers
• Unbreakable
• Hygenic ?
• Biodegradable
• Tactile, non slip
• Uses local materials
• Cheap

Source Edinburgh Castle Prison
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A few items from the Horners collection
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Horn was the first plastic for containers and
transparent covers and it is thermoplastic
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19th Century double ended medicine spoon and
narrow beakers marked with Fluid ounces.
Translucent horn. From the Horners collection
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Natural Rubber

• Charles Macintosh in Glasgow discoved naphtha a
  really good solvent for natural rubber.
• He spreads rubber solution onto fabric and then
  finishes with a second fabric on top.
• The raincoats are hard in cold winters and sticky
  in hot summers.

1823
MACINTOSH
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Natural Ruber

• Charles Goodyear is hired by small rubber company
  in Woburn, Massachusetts to help them solve the
  problem of making a temperature-stable rubber.
• He tries many things that dont work, including
  mixing rubber with sulphur, until it is
  accidentally left on a hot stove.
• Vulcanisation from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire
  and metal working

1839
GOODYEAR
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Hard rubber - Thomas Hancock

• Vulcanite or ebonite

1843
HANCOCK
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GUTTA-PERCHA

• Native tree in Malasia produces a latex very
  similar to Natural Rubber but hard and can be
  softened in hot water.
• Uses included
• stoppers for soda water bottles
• submarine telegraph cables not replaced until
  polyethylene came along.
• Dentistry
• Golf balls "guttie" (solid gutta-percha)
  introduced in 1848 replaced featherie

1843
MONTGOMERIE
Early Dimple Pattern
Bramble Pattern (c. 1890)
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Robert William Thomson 1822-1873

• Stonehavens most famous son was the eleventh
  child of the towns wealthy mill owner, and he
  invented
• "an elastic bearing for the purpose of lessening
  the power required to draw carriages, rendering
  their motion easier and diminishing the noise
  they make when in motion".
• We recognise this as the worlds first pneumatic
  tyre.
• Unfortunatley it failed due to
• the high load of a horse drawn carriage
• the poor state of roads at the time (before the
  car)
• poor rubber technology of the day.

1845
THOMSON
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Pneumatic Tyre

• John Boyd Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon, born in
  Scotland but living in Belfast makes a set of
  pneumatic tyres for his sons tricycle.
• He established what would become the Dunlop
  Rubber Company but had to fight and win a legal
  battle with Thomson.
• Dunlop sold the patent and company name early on.
  Despite Thomson's earlier work, Dunlop is
  credited with the invention of the modern rubber
  tyre.

1888
DUNLOP
Dunlop reinvents the pneumatic tyre forty-three
years later.
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Shellac

• natural polymer secreted by a southeast Asian
  beetle),
• Excellent quality of moulding detail leads to
• 78 rpm records
• 25 "shellac, cotton filler, powdered slate, and
  a small amount of a wax lubricant

1839
CRITCHLOW
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Bois Durci

• François Charles Lepage patented a plastics
  material composed of sawdust and blood albumen
  which he named Bois Durci (" hardened wood").
• This was compression moulded under pressure and
  steam heat.
• Bois Durci mouldings were exhibited at the
  international exhibitions in London in 1862 and
  Paris in 1867.
• Bois Durci moulding continued until about 1920,
  when it was superseded by newer plastics
  materials, such as bakelite.

1855
LEPAGE
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Parkesine

• Colourful plastics were displayed for the first
  time at the 1862 London International Exhibition.
  
• Parkesine was based on cellulose nitrate.
• Alexander Parkes anticipated many of the uses for
  which plastics have since been employed.
• In 1866, the Parkesine Company was established
  but within two years it was in liquidation.

1862
PARKES
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Celluloid

• John Wesley Hyatt discovered the use of heat and
  pressure in making camphor a plasticiser for
  cellulose nitrate.
• This minimised the need for additional solvent
  and eliminated most of the problems associated
  with the much larger quantity of volatile solvent
  used by his predecessors
• 1870 Hyatt and his brother set up the Albany
  Dental Plate Company to manufacture dental plate
  blanks from the new material which they called
  Celluloid.
• 1871 the Celluloid Manufacturing Company
• Developed machinery for working the new material
  - his 'stuffing machine' was a forerunner of
  injection moulding.

1870
HYATT
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Celluloid Film

• Hannibal Williston Goodwin experimented with
  cellulose nitrate as a less fragile material than
  glass for making lantern slides and in 1887 the
  filed a patent but it was not granted until 13
  September 1898.
• In the meantime, George Eastman had already
  started production of roll-film using his own
  process.
• In 1900, Goodwin set up the Goodwin Film Camera
  Co. but before film production had started he was
  killed in an accident.
• His patent was sold to Ansco who successfully
  sued Eastman Kodak for infringement of the patent
  and were awarded 5,000,000.

1887
GOODWIN
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Casein

• Casein (protein in milk) used by the Ancient
  Egyptians as a fixative for pigments in wall
  paintings.
• Also used in glues but not as a solid plastics
  material until the end of the 19th century.
• 1899 patent for "plastic compositions" was taken
  out in Germany.
• Casein plastics were manufactured from 1899
  under the trade-name Galalith and exhibited at
  the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900.
• The dry process was universally adopted and
  remained largely unchanged.
• Erinoid in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

1899
KUNTH
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Bakelite

• Leo Hendrick Baekelands patent of 18 February
  1907 described the first truly synthetic resin
  Bakelite
• The material of a thousand uses'.
• Phenolic resins, moulding powders, laminates,
  varnishes, adhesives and lacquers were among the
  important products resulting from his discovery.
• 1910 to market Bakelite he formed the General
  Bakelite Company in the USA and arranged for
  licensees in other parts of the world.
• The father of the plastics industry'

1907
BAEKELAND
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Bakelite - the material of a thousand uses'
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Sir James Swinburne

• James Swinburne b. Inverness on 28 February 1858.
  
• Interested in the potential of plastics in 1902
  when he was introduced to a product of the phenol
  formaldehyde reaction.
• Formed Fireproof Celluloid Syndicate Limited,
  unable to produce a moulding material, they were
  able to make an excellent hard lacquer for
  coating metals such as brass.
• 1910 transferred to Damard Lacquer Company Ltd.
• Swinburnes patent filed 1 day after Leo
  Baekeland.
• 1927, Swinburne and Baekeland formed a new
  company, Bakelite Limited, to exploit Baekeland's
  products in the UK and elsewhere.
• Sir James Swinburne was appointed its first
  Chairman and production began in Tyseley,
  Birmingham.

1910
SWINBURNE
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Hermann Staudinger

• Hermann Staudinger (1881 - 1965)
• German chemist who demonstrated the existence of
  macromolecules or polymers.
• Staudinger proposed in a landmark paper published
  in 1920 that rubber and other polymeric
  substances such as starch, cellulose and proteins
  are long chains of short repeating molecular
  units linked by covalent bonds.
• He spent much of his life proving this concept.
• Received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

1920
STAUDINGER
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1930s - Birth of Thermoplastics

• 1929 Polystyrene - IG Farben
• 1930 Polyamides - Carothers - DuPont
• 1932 Polymethylmethacrylate - Crawford - I C I
• 1933 Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC_p) - Semon - B.
  F. Goodrich
• 1933 Polyethylene (LDPE) - Gibson Fawcett -
  ICI
• 1938 Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) - Plunkett -
  Du Pont
• 1939 Polyurethanes - Bayer - IG Farben
• 1939 Epoxy Resin - Castan
• 1940 Polyacrylonitrile - Du Pont

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The Growth Years

• 1941 Poly(ethylene terephthalate) Whinfield
  Dickson
• 1943 Silicones Kipping
• 1953 Polyethylene (HDPE) Ziegler
• 1954 Polypropylene Natta
• 1958 Polycarbonate Fox - GE
• 1959 Acetal (POM) - McDonald - Du Pont 
• 1960 Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) - Du Pont
• 1962 Polyimide - Du Pont
• 1964 Poly(phenylene oxide) - General Electric
• 1965 Polysulphone - Union Carbide
• 1981 Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) Rose ICI
• 1991 Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) Biopol - ICI

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Thermoplastics
PEK PEEK
Ultra High Performance
PSU PES PEI
LCP
High Performance Thermoplastics
PPS
PC
PA6/6,6
PPE
Engineering Thermoplastics
Blends
PBT
ASA
PMMA
POM
Commodity
ABS SAN ASA
PP PP-EPDM
LD-PE
HD-PE
PS HIPS
PVC
Amorphous
Semi-Crystalline
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Organisation that can help