Vacuum Formed Plastics and ABS Plastic Fabrications For Aircraft Cabin Interior Components

Aerospace plastic thermoforming.

ABS plastic fabrications can be both injection moldings and plastic extrusions. High definition components plastic thermoforming is often in ABS, an excellent choice for use in alloys and blends.

Their unabreviated name is Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrenes. Medium-impact grades are used in videocassettes, televisions, and audiovisual equipment. Computer housings, modems, office systems equipment, and microfloppy disks are made with medium and high-impact grades, flame-retardant grades, and ABS-PVC and ABS-PC alloys.

In recreational vehicles, high-impact grades meet engineering requirements for dimensional stability, creep resistance, modulus, and strength, for applications such as countertops, sinks, and tub surrounds. Flame-retardant grades and ABS PVC alloys are used in roof-mounted air conditioning unit shrouds when warranted by electrical requirements. These qualities do make ABS suitable in aircraft. Technical thermoforming producers aircraft seat components and cabin interior components to FAR-JAR-OSU specifications.

Important factors in these applications are abuse resistance, retention of properties at low temperatures, and chemical resistance. There is also a use of extrusion grades in thermoformed sheet applications such as hot tubs and spas and basins.

New ABS aerospace grades are continuously being developed to meet the needs of emerging applications. In addition, new grades engineered to better meet the needs of existing ABS applications frequently replace other ABS grades. ABS alloy technology is increasingly being used to develop applications that were previously thought to be inaccessible, like various gears and impellers.

Vacuum formed plastics that are competitive materials.

There are resins that compete with ABS and can be grouped by performance. For the high-impact grades of ABS, PC and filled polypropylene (PP) are candidate competitors. Modified polyphenylene oxide (PPO) competes in the high-heat and high-impact areas. Aerospace acrylic compete with standard ABS grades because of their excellent appearance, and it competes with clear ABS because of its excellent clarity and good color. High-impact polystyrene (HIPS) has excellent processibility and competes with the lower impact end of the ABS spectrum, although it is very deficient in chemical resistance and appearance. In fact, none of these resins offers the overall balance of properties found in the ABS family for vacuum formed plastics and high definition components.

Family Characteristics

Compared to many other engineering thermoplastics, ABS offers superior processibility and appearance as well as low cost, along with a good balance of engineering properties, including low creep, good dimensional stability, and high strength and rigidity.