We have recently filed a new patent application for a device
called a Dimple Card.  I have a number of Plastics related
questions for this, but will start off with a simple one.
We are evaluating and reviewing different plastics and their
properties for suitability for prototypes, but wanted to first
understand 'how would you segment plastics and plastic like
materials' to narrow down which we will use.  This is the first
of dozens of questions related to this project, and though we
have multiple people working on this, even Plastics experts
do not agree.  Here is the question:

1) Please give me all of the different ways plastics are segmented
   and the major categories?  

Will follow-up with other questions after this.  Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 25 Jan 2003 13:16 PST

I thought I could answer this at first, since I've spent years working
with the chemicals and plastics industries.  But the more I thought,
the more I realized what your experts probably know already:  there
are so many different types of ways to categorize plastics that
there's no way to give you ALL of them (or even very many of them!). 
There are thermosets vs thermoplastics, ethylenes vs styrenes vs
acrylamides vs ABS; simple vs complex...and that's just a few of the
chemical distinctions.  There are recycle distinctions, market
distinctions, specialty distinctions and so on and so on.

Is there any way you can narrow down your (already narrowed, I
realize) question?

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Clarification of Question by martinjay-ga on 25 Jan 2003 13:38 PST

Thanks, and I guess maybe I was asking a question which I
hoped had an answer.  Let me change it a little bit to 
make it more reasonable.

Dimple Card is more or less the same concept as the cup lids
from Fast Food restaurants transposed over on to a plastic
card similiar to a credit card, with an array of dimple rather
than just a couple to record a single data point.  We have
two major questions we are trying to tackle, which I will slowly
being working towards getting some more insight.

Given the description, the plastic needs to be able to be
formed into a sheet (too expensive to injection mold, or
so we believe), must be able to print on it, must be rigid
enough to not 'flop' while depressing the dimple, but must
allow permanent deformation in forming the dimples, while
allowing plastic deformation to permit them to go back and
forth for multiple use.  Let's see if you can't narrow down what
materials might be worth looking at or figure out a method to
segment them so we can begin exclusing them.  Also, my 
experts are people I have consulted and gotten 'bits' of their
time.  Thanks, and sorry to be vague.  Also, as I get good answers,
I intend to put more involved questions for much higher dollars.
Starting small as you can understand.

Hi Martin
          
          My guess, may be a wild guess, 
 is that you are looking for terminology
and some intro reading on mechanical properties of polymers -
sort of Rheology 101.

 I will give it a try:

Look at site
http://innfm.swan.ac.uk/innfm_updated/content/about/glossary.asp?index=9
and
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=rheology

for some basic terms (plastic vs elastic deformation)

Look at site
http://www.matweb.com/index.asp?ckck=1
to get feel forthe  multitude of data available

Click on this page on 'thermoplast vs thermoset' terms
http://learn.chem.vt.edu/tutorials/lsproperties/index.html

  That should about $3 worth of search which should
 help you to form your opnion; rating would be appreciated.

hedgie

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Request for Answer Clarification by martinjay-ga on 26 Jan 2003 11:35 PST

Hedgie

Thanks, and that is part of it, but I still want to
get a couple of different ways to segment them
before I close this out and write my next question.
Some interesting sites you had, and a few are
useful.  I am a newbie (2 days) with GA, so
I am trying to figure out all this responding and
closing out, and splitting answers.  I still don't
have what I want for this answer, and I am looking
for something like:

Plastics can be segmented into the
As
Bs
Cs

Under the As, there are 4 groups.....

This way be done in a couple of different
ways such that the Plastics world could be
cross sectioned 2, 3 or more ways, and
that is what I am looking for with a recommendation
of 'which' way would be best for my objectives.

Thanks, and why did you call me Mr. Martin?
Curious, figured you saw something and wondered where.

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Clarification of Answer by hedgie-ga on 27 Jan 2003 03:54 PST

Martinjay

         I took  Martin' from your handle,
	 which looks like Martin Jay.

  Plastics can be classified by many criteria,
  chemical composition, properties (mechanical,
  electrical,..) applications, ...

  So indeed the tree you want can be constructed.
  However, considering the complexity of the field
  just typing of the full tree would take days and days,
  and would exceed a time which one can reasonably expect
  based  on  price you selected.
  
  Therefore I provided pointers to
  the information which can be used to construct such trees.

  I will now give you more specific answer to your 
  specific request for a classification.

  The basic structure (with definitions) is given here:

http://www.uscs.edu/~llever/Polymer Resources/Classification.htm
and a bit differently here
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~ranga/school/me223/intro4.html

Classification based on composition is here:
http://www.derwent.com/dwpireference/classification/dclassa.html

More complex tree, used by technical journals,  is given here:
http://www.interjournal.org/areas_PX.html

This one is based on both application and composition:
http://www.tias.com/stores/witsend/JocelynHowellsonPlastic.htm

and here is the classification from the chemists point of view:

 A. POLYMERS - TERMINOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION: 1. Major
Characteristics : a ...
atenea.udistrital.edu.co/dependencias/bioingenieria/
biomateriales/LECTURE5.PDF

and this one is product oriented. I includes materials and form of
product
(sheet, fiber, film,...)
http://www.rapra.net/home.html?rpd/rpdb.htm~main

Here is summary of additional criteria, which can be used to futher
refine the trees
http://www.ipfdd.de/others/poly-faq.html#class

  The classification can be combined, to create trees of the greater
depth.
  That I have to leave 'as a homework', really.

  The search terms:
  
  polymers
  classification
  
  
        I hope this initial info on classification 
	of plastics answered your question.

	hedgie

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Clarification of Answer by hedgie-ga on 27 Jan 2003 03:56 PST

The link for basic structure got mutliated,
try this one instead

http://www.uscs.edu/~llever/Polymer Resources/Classification.htm 

sorry about that

hedgie

---

Clarification of Answer by hedgie-ga on 27 Jan 2003 04:13 PST

Sorry,

  I cannot make this link clickable. It is not proper to use blanks
in URL as this professor did, which is why we have this problem:
Google software does not recognise this as one URL.

 However, the page is very well done and gives
a noce graphic representation of the tree you want. 
You will have to paste it, whole line, with blank in it 

or type as it is shown, into the
adress field of your browser.

Thanks, and I did my first five questions as a test, and apologize for my
naivete.  Great job and for this area I will be coming back to ask very
specific questions in the future.  Slowly learning how to use this forum.