If you are seeking how plastic pigments are used and its process then you are at the right place.
Pigments are usually added to the polymer base to give a specific color to the plastic material. Organic pigments are hard to separate and tend to form agglomerates meaning; clumps of pigment particles. These clumps can cause spots in the final plastic product.
Apart from this, inorganic pigments such as Metal oxides, sulphides, carbon black, etc. get easily dispersed in the resin. Among all the inorganic pigments, titanium dioxide pigment is one of the most widely used pigments in the plastics industry.
Let's take a look at the broad classifications of plastic pigments along with their performance properties.
Performance Properties of Plastic Pigment
1. Weatherability
Exposure to light and some artificial lights can have adverse impacts on the useful life of plastic material. Therefore, polymers that are used outdoors regularly require UV protection and weather-resistant pigments.
To evaluate weathering resistance in practice, you have to use outside exposure tests in the climatic range concerned. This is not always feasible.
2. Light Fastness
Light Fastness is a standard of the color fastness of a plastic substance when used in indoor applications. If a pigment has good Light Fastness, it does not always indicate that it has good weather-fastness.
3. Warping
The degree and speed of crystallization determine the final properties of a plastic piece. However, the organic pigment is known to influence these parameters during the cooling phase of plastic processing, particularly in HDPE injection molding.
4. Transparency
Normally, transparency is obtained by reducing pigment's particle size as much as possible which is achieved by surrounding the pigment particles as soon as they are formed with a coating, which prevents the growth of crystals.
The most common products used in this process are rosin derivatives.
This is particularly helpful for pigments for the printing ink industry that are required to have high transparency.
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