Plastic as a metal substitute

Design freedom, lightweight construction, corrosion resistance, cost-effective production – there are many good arguments in favor of plastics as a construction material. However, there are many reservations about plastics as a material, especially when it comes to the development of components that are subject to high mechanical loads, whether because people have an image of inferior plastic in their minds, because they have already been shipwrecked by the first attempts to use plastic instead of metal, or because they do not have enough information about the countless, non-standardized types of plastic.

Yet highly reinforced plastics offer an extremely interesting property profile: tensile strength of up to 300 N/mm², fatigue strength of up to 100 N/mm², high resistance to environmental influences and a density of between 1 and 2 g/cm³ make these materials a lightweight alternative to zinc, aluminum or brass. If one also takes into account that the economical production by injection molding allows savings potentials of 40% and more compared to an equivalent solution made of metal, everything speaks in favor of dealing intensively with the topic of metal replacement.

BARLOG Plastics GmbH offers a wide range of highly reinforced plastics from PBT to PA, PPA, PPS and LCP to PEEK and can look back on more than 20 years of experience in metal replacement projects. The group of companies offers, also independently of its own material range, a comprehensive spectrum of development services, such as material selection, the determination of material characteristics in the test laboratory, feasibility analyses, injection molding simulations, FE calculations and injection molded prototypes, up to the complete contract development of plastic parts.

In our newsletter and on this website we regularly publish new application examples, among others on the topic of metal replacement. Let us inspire you and feel free to contact us!

Published so far:

• Lightweight carabiner made of carbon fiber reinforced KEBAFORM POM
• Ground recessed luminaire made of long fiber reinforced Grivory PPA
• Clutch center release made of glass fiber reinforced Grivory PPA