We at Technical Foam Services are a leading UK foam company in specialist foam products. People think of foam generally in terms of what they are used to seeing: bright Neoprene swim aids, or Visco Memory Foam mattresses, for example. However, there are literally hundreds of other types, some with very specialised uses.

Foam producers are constantly coming up with new ideas for their products. Today, we have foams impregnated with metal, glass or ceramic beads. They are composed from polymers, elastomers, plastics, thermoset plastics, thermoset resins and thermoplastics. Spray foams are even used in casting resins.

Foam rubber suppliers sell their products as both stock shapes and fabricated to order. Stock shapes include foam blocks, bars, boards, rolls, rods and sheets. Fabrication to specific designs is achieved by injection, compression, reaction injection, resin transfer and blow moulding, or by film extrusion.

The chemicals used for producing foams are as varied as the products themselves. ABS (Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) is a rigid, hard thermoplastic polymer with good chemical and creep resistance. Acrylic polymers are fast-setting and excellent for outdoor use. Epoxy resin foams have high strength and show little shrinkage during the curing process. Fluoropolymer foams show high resistance to chemical interaction, while styrenes are used for pressure sensitive adhesive products.

Most people understand the term foam rubber to mean products with a soft, rebounding property. However, even here the term covers many chemical types. Rubber foams are synthetic elastomers (i.e. rubbers) based around chemicals like silicone, polyurethane and neoprene. Nitrile rubber foams are especially good in petrochemical environments.

Tags: foam, foam products, rubber foams, UK foam company

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Foams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.