Medical Grade Liquid Silicone and Shore Hardness/Color change in LSR Injection Molded Process

Medical-grade Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR) is becoming more and more crucial to medical device industry, as medical grade liquid silicone combine both general benefits of medical-grade silicones and  Liquid Silicone Rubber's excellent advantages: durability, wide temperature range, chemical inertness, high tensile strength, vast range of available durometers, biocompatibility, as so on.

Medical Grade Silicone's Application:

Medical grade silicone is a good choice for drug-eluting implantable devices.

As new medical-grade LSR materials become commercially available, more reliable, better performing, and more affordable medical devices will be within reach of patients.

Medical grade LSR is suitable for Implantables medical device application. Wearables (such as heart rate and activity monitors), respiratory products, linings for prosthetic limbs, and other devices which must stay in prolonged physical contact with a patient all benefit from medical-grade LSR’s outstanding biocompatibility and purity.

Some customers will ask whether can the shore hardness be changed in LSR Injection Molded process?

The answer is yes. But change shore hardness for Liquid Silicone Injection Molding is time consuming and material waste.

Normally, we will not test different shore hardness if the quantity is small. Because the waste material is much more than the product itself. And also need spend about one day to clean the needle valves completely. So compared to compression molding, shore hardness change is much more difficult and complicate. For compression molding, just need to prepare different shore hardness material, which is easier. So shore hardness change during production is one of compresion molding's advantages.

Color change during process is also an advange of compression. Color change is very easy for compression mold. Just add pigment to mix and milling.

But for Liquid Silicone Injection Molding, is as difficult as changing shore hardness. Also need to take a long time to clean the needlve valves completely.

As new medical-grade LSR continues to be released on the market, and new and improved medical devices has good improvement in both design and materials, we believe the medical device industry will make steady advances and improve the length and quality of life of patients around the world.