On account of more and more customers apply THERMOLAST V to high-standard applications for seals in the automotive industry, KRAIBURG TPE will produce the THERMOLAST V series of advanced compounds on a large scale.

The new product series offer high performance like excellent heat resistance, improved compression set and good polyamide encapsulation. In March 9-10, 2016, the German Institute of Engineers association (VDI) held the International Conference in the Mannheim“Plastic application in Automotive Engineering”, KRAIBURG TPE will introduce this material.

Due to the excellent mechanical stability required when thermoplastic elastomers are exposed to high temperatures in the hood, applications in the automotive industry are very demanding. KRAIBURG TPE has developed compounds with higher hardness (50 to 80 Shore A) for this type of application and has begun mass production of such compounds.

Dr. Martin Geissinger, Product Manager for  Europe, Middle East and Africa of KRAIBURG TPE, explained the company's decision:“Polyamide is a very important and critical building material, so we have expanded and improved our existing product series to provide TPE with good polyamide encapsulation properties and heat resistance."

THERMOLAST V compounds have good mechanical stability and excellent heat resistance. In addition, the specially formulated TPE has excellent compression set and is especially suitable for applications exposed to high temperatures for extended periods of time. These TPEs also exhibit superior polypropylene and polyamide encapsulation properties when using a two-component injection molding process. The combination of these properties makes THERMOLAST V stand out in the marketplace, for example, it is ideal for timing seal applications with covers and cable gaskets.

In the automotive industry, many processing companies rely on this hard component and efficient multi-component processing methods. At present,new products in the THERMOLAST V seriescan offer cost-effective and combined applications. The excellent encapsulation results (greater than 5 N/mm) can be achieved by the two components, THERMOLAST V and polyamide, by using the ideal two-component injection molding process parameters.