plastic machine blog

It has been more than one hundred years from the invention of the first plastic product. Nowadays the plastic is playing an important role in our morden life. From your home to office, school to factory, plastic appears everywhere.

Parkesine, the first man-made plastic, was created by Alexander Parkes who publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. It was an organic material derived from cellulose that once heated could be molded but that retained its shape when cooled.Parkes claimed that this new material could do anything rubber was capable of, but at a lower price. He had discovered something that could be transparent as well as carved into thousands of different shapes. But Parkesine soon lost its luster, when investors pulled the plug on the product due to the high cost of the raw materials needed in its production.

Celluloid is derived from cellulose and alcoholized camphor. John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid as a substitute for the ivory in billiard balls in 1868. He first tried using collodion a natural substance, after spilling a bottle of it and discovering that the material dried into a tough and flexible film. However, the material was not strong enough to be used as a billiard ball, until the addition of camphor, a derivative of the laurel tree. The new celluloid could be molded with heat and pressure into a durable shape.Besides billiard balls, celluloid became famous as the first flexible photographic film used for still photography and motion pictures. John Wesley Hyatt created celluloid in a strip format for movie film. By 1900, movie film was an exploding market for celluloid.

Bakelit, the first completely synthetic man-made substance was discovered in 1907, when Leo Baekeland, a New York chemist, developed a liquid resin that he named Bakelite. Baekeland had developed an apparatus – which he called a Bakelizer – that enabled him to vary heat and pressure precisely so as to control the reaction of volatile chemicals. Using this pot-like apparatus, Baekeland developed a new liquid (bakelite resin) that rapidly hardened and took the shape of its container. Once hardened, the resin would form an exact replica of any vessel that contained it. This new material would not burn, boil, melt, or dissolve in any commonly available acid or solvent. This meant that once it was firmly set, it would never change. This one benefit made it stand out from previous “plastics.” While celluloid-based substances could be melted down innumerable times and reformed, Bakelite was the first thermoset plastic which would retain its shape and form under any circumstances.

Timeline – Precursors

• 1839 – Natural Rubber – method of processing invented by Charles Goodyear
• 1843 – Vulcanite – Thomas Hancock
• 1843 – Gutta-Percha – William Montgomerie
• 1856 – Shellac – Alfred Critchlow, Samuel Peck
• 1856 – Bois Durci – Francois Charles Lepag

Timeline – Beginning of the Plastic Era with Semi Synthetics

• 1839 – Polystyrene or PS discovered – Eduard Simon
• 1862 – Parkesine – Alexander Parkes
• 1863 – Cellulose Nitrate or Celluloid – John Wesley Hyatt
• 1872 – Polyvinyl Chloride or PVC – first created by Eugen Baumann
• 1894 – Viscose Rayon – Charles Frederick Cross, Edward John Bevan

Timeline – Thermosetting Plastics and Thermoplastics

• 1908 – Cellophane – Jacques E. Brandenberger
• 1909 – First true plastic Phenol-Formaldehyde tradenamed Bakelite

- Leo Hendrik Baekeland

• 1926 – Vinyl or PVC – Walter Semon invented a plasticized PVC.
• 1927 – Cellulose Acetate
• 1933 – Polyvinylidene chloride or Saran also called PVDC – accidentally discovered by Ralph Wiley, a Dow Chemical lab worker.
• 1935 – Low-density polyethylene or LDPE – Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett
• 1936 – Acrylic or Polymethyl Methacrylate
• 1937 – Polyurethanes tradenamed Igamid for plastics materials and Perlon for fibers. – Otto Bayer and co-workers discovered and patented the chemistry of polyurethanes
• 1938 – Polystyrene made practical
• 1938 – Polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE tradenamed Teflon – Roy Plunkett
• 1939 – Nylon and Neoprene

considered a replacement for silk and a synthetic rubber respectively Wallace Hume Carothers

• 1941 – Polyethylene Terephthalate or Pet – Whinfield and Dickson
• 1942 – Low Density Polyethylene
• 1942 – Unsaturated Polyester also called PET patented by John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson
• 1951 – High-density polyethylene or HDPE tradenamed Marlex – Paul Hogan and Robert Banks
• 1951 – Polypropylene or PP – Paul Hogan and Robert Banks
• 1953 – Saran Wrap introduced by Dow Chemicals.
• 1954 – Styrofoam the trademarked form of polystyrene foam insulation, invented by Ray McIntire for Dow Chemicals
• 1964 – Polyimide
• 1970 – Thermoplastic Polyester this includes trademarked Dacron, Mylar, Melinex, Teijin, and Tetoron
• 1978 – Linear Low Density Polyethylene
• 1985 – Liquid Crystal Polymers