Materials of Plastic Lockers
The plastic material is very familiar to people in daily life. So do plastic lockers. Moreover, there are several kinds of plastics used for the locker and different kinds of plastics can affect the quality and performance of the plastic locker.
Classifications of plastic locker materials
According to applications, plastic materials are divided into the universal materials and the engineering materials. Universal materials have low prices, large production amount and wide ranges of applications. Widely used for commodities, there are five kinds of universal plastics: polyolefin, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, phenolic plastic and amino plastic.
Engineering plastics can be used for engineering structures and can replace the metal as materials for making machine components. Engineering plastics include PA (polyamide), PC (polycarbonate), ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) and PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene).
With features such as low density, good performance, high chemical stability and outstanding electrical insulating properties, engineering plastics are widely applied to ordinary machinery industry, such as automobile industry, the electric appliance industry and the electric instruments industry. Meanwhile, engineering plastics are also applied to the aerospace industry and manufacture of rockets, missiles, etc.
Materials used for plastic lockers
As much plastic furniture is usually made of polypropylene plastics (PP) or polyethylene plastics (PE), PP is preferred more than PE. As high-quality resin with excellent combination properties, PP is the result of technical development based on nylon and is a kind of high-density linear polymer without the side chain. Moreover, compared with PE, PP has less weight, higher hardness and better transparency.
With the natural color and the smooth surface, the PP particle is cylindrical, odorless and non-toxic. The particle has no mechanical impurities, which has no harmful effects on the human body. However, PP is easily oxidized.
ABS, the abbreviation of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, belongs to thermoplastic polymer materials, with high density, good toughness and outstanding formability. At the same time, the appearance of ABS is opaque and yellowish.
Most ABS is nontoxic and has low water absorption. After the polishing treatment, the surface of the ABS can be very smooth, which makes ABS suitable for plastic lockers with high requirements of appearances and texture. Meanwhile, ABS shows great dimensional stability and mechanical properties. Based on the advantages mentioned above, ABS resin is recognized as one of the outstanding engineering plastics.
No matter whether the plastic used for the plastic locker is toxic or not, before being put into use, a new plastic locker is supposed to be placed in the well-ventilated room until there is no pungent odour around it. After all, besides plastics, there are also some additives such as filer, plasticizer, stabilizer and lubricant used for the plastic locker.
Market conditions of plastic lockers
Plastic lockers are quite popular in China although some people believe that these lockers are harmful to the human body. A survey of plastic furniture market shows that about 72.73% of interviewers have intentions to buy plastic furniture and only about 9.09% of interviewers show interest in purchasing plastic furniture. About the rest of the interviewers, even though they have no idea about plastic furniture, the plastic furniture is still not out of their shopping lists.
