The universe of resins and materials, incredibly enough, continues to expand, now topping 60,000. To help better understand what’s out there and how it can help you, IMM is launching this four-part series, authored with the help of resin experts IDES.

These are interesting times for the plastics industry. Increasing resin prices, decreasing supply, pressure from offshore, and a troubled automotive sector are just some of the factors that contribute to a very challenging landscape for injection molders and plastic part designers.

Compounding these challenges is the plethora of resin grades available in today’s marketplace. One might surmise that with all the consolidation in this industry, the number of choices may have been reduced, but this, in fact, is not the case. There are now more than 60,000 plastics out there—and the number is growing. Therefore, the question then becomes, how do designers and molders find the best possible material for the job while having the peace of mind that they have also found the lowest cost?

More materials now than ever—why?

Looking back 20 years, we see that the number of resins on the market has continued to grow (see graph). In a market that is becoming increasingly commoditized, one would not expect the number of available products to expand; common sense would say that it should actually contract.

So, then, why do we see this path of continued growth? First, we are dealing now, more than ever before, with a global market. Twenty years ago there were few resin suppliers that exported to the United States and fewer still from the Pacific Rim. Of the 500-plus resin suppliers that provide the U.S. with resins today, more than 50 are headquartered in Asia. And more Asian suppliers are being added every year. Of course the challenge is to be able to identify these other potential sources.

Although there have not been any new significant generic families of materials introduced in several years, suppliers continue to hone their existing products to better meet the needs of emerging markets. There are, for example, 887 grades of GE’s Lexan, each developed to satisfy a particular need. As plastics are pushed into more demanding applications, resin suppliers will continue to respond with a grade slate to meet the requirements.

What resins are we searching for?

With the vast number of resins out there, it is interesting to see what sorts of materials designers and molders are looking for. On the next page are three tables that show the top 20 most searched materials, generic families, and resin suppliers. One could conclude from this that the lion’s share of today’s applications is being produced with these material families. One might also conclude that other viable materials don’t hit the top 10 list because molders and OEMs are unaware that there might be an alternative.

The key, of course, is to learn about and find those alternative materials, and then see if you can find ways of making those materials work for you and your customers. While materials substitution is not a trivial process, given the mechanical and physical requirements of products, the odds are good that you can find a suitable, less-expensive material from among the available 60,000 resins. It turns out there are some excellent resources that can help in this regard.

Get a little help from your friends

Everyone knows about Google. But how many OEMs and molders use it to find information on the materials they need? Take a simple test. Type “Magnum 1040” into Google. Instantly you’ll see relevant results that lead to an abundance of information for this material. It turns out that if you are very specific with your request, including the material type and grade, you’ll almost always get what you need. You can do the same thing to find materials of various families. Try “nylon 66” and experiment with other combinations. The more specific you are, the better, because if you simply type “nylon” into Google, you’ll mostly get nonplastics-related results.

The challenge is how to sort through the mounds of data that reside on the Internet. The first step in that direction is to get into a materials database that specializes in polymer resins. There are several out there, including one at the IDES site (www.ides.com). Once you get into such a database—or even if you’re just Googling—there are some search dos and don’ts to follow that can help you find the material you’re looking for:

• Include words like “resin” or “polymer” when searching for terms that return numerous invalid results—e.g., “nylon resin” vs. “nylon.” This can be helpful when a product line’s name isn’t unique to the product. For example, if you’re searching for a new, inexpensive PE product line called “Penny,” searching for “Penny resin” or “Penny PE” will get you closer than just searching for “Penny.”

• When looking for a specific grade of an obscure or new product, search for the product line first. Many times a product line will be mentioned on a site, but no grades will be listed. This can lead you to the manufacturer and some contact information.

• You may need to take different languages into account as not everyone’s site is multilingual. If you’re looking for polystyrene that you know is made by a German company, you should search for polystyrol. If it’s an LDPE made by a company whose native language is Spanish, you should search for PEBD.

• If you find yourself on an Asian site without an English option, many times if you mouse-over buttons and links, the URLs shown at the bottom of your browser are in English.

• If you just can’t find a company’s website but you can see it mentioned in search results, take a look at the results that are business-related articles. Sometimes they’ll mention a company being absorbed by another company or changing its name to something else. A product line you thought was made by one company may now be offered by a different company as a result of mergers, joint ventures, or acquisition.

• Try different variations of special characters like “-” and “/” in grade names. Simplify grade names and if they have a color code at the end, leave it out of the search.

• Human error can creep into material requests (poor handwriting, not hearing someone correctly, and so forth). Mistaking O for 0 or vice-versa can make a big difference. Other mistakes are B vs. 8, 3 vs. E, and 1 vs. l.

• If you make it to a site with search functionality, use wildcards in areas of uncertainty (45%V%0 vs. 45/V-0). Experiment with % and * to see which wildcard is used.

When all else fails, use persistence. The Internet will play a much more important role in the plastics industry as time goes on. Search engines will become more complete with the type of information molders need to better compete in the global marketplace.

Mike Kmetz is president of IDES, a plastic materials information firm based in Laramie, WY. IDES’s primary product is The Plastics Web, a database of materials that provides vertical search capabilities on a variety of resins and materials technical data. Kmetz can be reached at kmetzm@ides.com, or (307) 742-9227. Visit IDES online at www.ides.com.