Advantages of silicone:

Silicone with its soft touch, good elasticity, non-toxic safety and other characteristics in daily necessities, erotic products, medical equipment, electronics industry and many other fields are widely used. But even the best materials can not withstand the fussy nature of mankind.

Silicone shortcomings:

Price is not cheap. Currently on the market, the price of good quality silicone is generally not less than 30,000 yuan 1 ton, some even higher;

Longer molding cycle. Silicone is the need for crosslinking (or vulcanization), in addition to a small number of injection molding silicone, most silicone raw materials molding processing time needs to be counted in minutes, which, in effect, reduces the production capacity;

Cannot be recycled. As silicone products are vulcanized molding. Its corners, scrap and waste silicone products can not be recycled, which also invariably increases the cost of materials, is not conducive to environmental protection and sustainable development.

TPE and silicone have a lot of similar properties, such as both have a soft touch, rubber resilience, non-toxic environmental protection, etc. TPE compared to silicone, its advantages are

TPE soft rubber can be injection molding or extrusion process of rapid prototyping, and do not need to be like silicone, molding vulcanization molding;

TPE trimmings, scrap and waste products can be almost 100% recycled;

Relatively low cost. As above, the general cost of silica gel is more than 30,000 yuan a ton, while most of the TPE price is below 30,000, or even 20,000 yuan a ton.

Disadvantages of TPE soft rubber:

Although TPE has the advantages as above, but as a thermoplastic material TPE, also has its inferior or inferior to silicone.

Elasticity is not as good as silicone. Silicone is vulcanized system, its elastic deformation in the removal of external forces can be 100% return to its original state; while the elastic deformation of TPE in excess of a certain force or tensile elongation, its elastic recovery often can not be restored;

Feel slightly inferior. Silicone soft touch, smooth, TPE, although it has the same outstanding soft touch, but to get with silicone comparable to the excellent smooth effect, it is more difficult, although by adjusting the TPE formula can improve the appearance of TPE smoothness, but this is often to increase the cost of TPE at the expense of;

Environmental protection is slightly inferior. Although TPE basically meets all the requirements of environmental testing. However, when doing food-grade testing (US FDA 21CFR 177. 2600 and German LFGB), TPE tests do not pass, while silicone is fully compliant with the test.

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