What characteristics of plastics drive their costs?

Question

Many good answers. Specifically, which characteristic is difficult to obtain. Tensile strength, Impact strength, flammability, UV resistance, gloss etc....?

Thanks KB, I understand tooling costs. But then a tool is always necessary irrespective of which resin we use to produce the part. My focus is on the resin choice for cost and question the need for characteristics that are cost drivers.

Answer 1

I agree with the answers above. But to be more specific on reagents used to produce it, primarily the monomers and catalyst. Different monomers have different costs because they take different processing techniques to produce. Energy usage varies a lot for these different techniques. Some may require very high pressures and temperatures so use a lot more energy to produce. As for catalysts, they are relatively expensive so if a polymerization takes a lot of catalyst or the catalyst spoils easily, the costs are higher.

Answer 2

I think the cost of the raw material is kind of insignificant compared to the cost of the tooling to make them into something. Very tough plastics tend to get far fewer shots (injection molding) in the die life. When I have done plastic products the way the tooling cost was amortized over the life of the product was always an important consideration from a cost point of view.

Answer 3

Mainly....

the quality of the plastics in question, the price of the reagents used to produce it, the cost of making it available, and simple marketing techniques.

Example: A plastic ipod case is going to sell for much more than a plastic pencil case made of the same type and amount of plastic.

Answer 4

I worked in plastics for 4 years, in extrusion. I am no expert but it seems to me that since plastics are pretty much all made from petrochemicals, that their cost will rise along with oil as the peak of production is reached and then passed.

Answer 5

OIL...