Something you should know about silicone raw materials!

Hopewell Silicon Plastic Tech Co., Ltd, as the professional manufacturer of silicone molded products, today, we’ll introduce you something you should know about silicone raw materials.

As you may know, silicone materials can be divided to solid silicone and liquid silicone.(In the previous article, we talked about the difference between compression molding (solid silicone) and liquid injection molding (liquid silicone), if interested, you can take a look at the article or video.

https://youtu.be/0HYZTrB5oJk 

Currently, we mainly have below 3 kinds of silicone:

1) Food grade silicone, can be divided into solid silicone and liquid silicone, and the raw material price is about USD4-10/ KG, usually, we can provide FDA, LFGB and other food grade certifications. This kind of food grade silicone material can used to produce silicone control valves, silicone gaskets, silicone sleeves, VR silicone covers and other silicone consumer products.

2)Medical grade silicone, including solid silicone and liquid silicone, and the raw material cost is about USD10 to USD40/KG, the ISO10993 or bio-compatibility certifications can be provided as requirements. This kind of medical silicone raw material usually to be used for production of medical silicone wound drainage ball, medical silicone airbag, medical silicone check valve or other high-end custom silicone components for medical devices.

3) Optical grade silicone is only available in liquid silicone, and the raw material price is about USD60 to USD120/ KG, there will be performance testing report to clarify the light transmission, flame resistance, durability and so on. And, it can be used to make optical silicon lens for LED lighting, silicone reflective lenses for street lamps, LSR silicon optics for ADB automotive headlights.

For now, our main silicone raw materials suppliers are : Elkem, Shin-Etsu (Food grade silicone), Dow Corning, Nusil (Medical grade silicone), Wacker, Momentive, Doneson (Optical grade silicone).

According to the characteristics of these 3 kinds of silicone, we’ve also setup different workshops accordingly.

1) For food grade silicone products, it can be processed by compression molding and LSR injection molding at our workshop I, we have 12 Sets Liquid Injection Molding Machines, 6 Sets Compression Molding Machines, to help produce food grade silicone products.

2) For medical grade silicone, it can be processed at our ISO 13485 certified LSR injection molding workshop II, we have 14 Sets Liquid Injection Molding Machines, and this workship is Class 100,000 Cleanroom, with 2 Lines UV Plasma Surface Treatment equipment to help produce medical grade silicone products.

3) For optical grade silicone, it can be processed at our class 100,000 clean optical production workshop III, we have 9 Sets ARBURG Horizontal Liquid Injection Molding Machines, 3 Sets Vertical Liquid Injection Molding Machines, together with Class 10,000 Full Inspection Room and 1 Set EVERFINE Light Distribution Performance Test System, which can help us produce high-quality silicon lenses and to ensure the performance meets customers’ requirements.

What’s more, we have set up the automatic punching production for silicone valves, not only does it increase our daily output, it also increases our productivity, giving our customers a higher quality product at same time.

Hopewell is committed to providing high quality and cost-effective silicone molding products to customers worldwide, covering industries of medical, consumer electronics, electronic components and household.

If you have any design of silicone molded products, please feel free to contact us, we’re looking forward to cooperating with you, contact us now.