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Recently, I've begun to research the plastic molding industry. Upon first starting out, I honestly thought it was going to be pretty simple, but I was in for a surprise! There's actually a lot that goes into shaping some of the simplest things, like a coke bottle. Really, the process has been made much easier by experts trying to improve the field. Without the work of several individuals, the mass amounts of plastic production that incur today would never have made it. From discovering different varieties of plastics to reshaping the machinery needed for it, plastic manufacturing has truly come along a way. However, for us to get an accurate understanding of the manufacturing process, we first have to understand plastic itself.

Generally, plastic is a polymer (a large molecule composed of repeating structural units) of high molecular mass. As to be expected with any mass production of a product, plastic may contain a number of other compounds in them. This can be for a number of reasons but it usually serves a purpose of either dropping costs, or improving the product. This really all depends on the manufacturers.

Plastic comes from the Greek word plastikos. Plastikos translates to "able to be shaped or molded." This applies to plastic because during its manufacturing, it is easily manipulated in order to fit the shape of various plastic products. When you begin to look at what kind of products are created and used by these manufacturers, you really begin to see its versatility. For instance, the thousands of different types of injection molded parts, tubes, boxes, and plates that are produced by plastic companies every day.

Fortunately, to make things a little easier, there are only two types of plastic. All variations of plastic fall into one of these two categories : thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers. The difference you need to remember with these is that in the case of thermoplastic, there has been a chemical change made, allowing it to be what it is. This is not the case with thermosetting polymers, which makes it unable to be reheated with out exposing it to damage.

Plastics are often classified in a number of ways. For instance, there is differentiating between chemical structures, including acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, and halogenated plastics. It is also very common for plastics to be classified based on quality as well as physical properties (glass transition temperature, density, strength).

You may not know this, but there are quite a few different types of plastics, some may seem familiar to you. After WWI, the pressure was on to create cheap and durable materials in order to mass produce. Thus, two new plastics were created, PVC (or polyvinyl chloride) and polystyrene. These plastics were manufactured by IG Farben from Germany, and they rose quickly in popularity. These plastics, especially PVC, continues to be a huge member of the plastic community (for things such as housing, plumbing, etc.).

But these plastics were still not enough for the growing rate of industrialization. Shortly after their release, a discovery was made that opened up hundreds of doors for manufacturers, polyamide. Polyamide may sound more familiar to you by its other name, nylon. Nylon was able to stretch at a rate that not many had seen, and after the war, production in women's stockings rose to an incredible height!

As with every industry, there are going to be a lot of innovative people trying to improve upon it. Rubber was often used for several products, but when supplies were scarce during WWII, it was very difficult for manufacturers to acquire. Thus inspired the making of synthetic rubber. After the revealing of this material, the demand for it began to rise and rise to record heights.