Why Choose Liquid Silicone Instead of Solid Silicone?--LSR Silicone’s Feature Trend

1. Higher Safety- 100% Food Grade and Medical Grade

• Liquid Silicone is safer compared to solid silicone. Liquid silicone rubber is a 100% Food Grade two-part platinum-cured silicone, which is a high-purity and non-toxic materials. 

• LSR is an inorganic nature, which is clean, plasticizer-free, tasteless, and is water proof, can resist oxidation and some chemical materials like acids and alkali.

• Liquid silicone rubber also resists to bacteria growth, which will not stain or corrode other materials and also burns to form water vapor and carbon dioxide, not halogens, not toxins etc. Good water and medical contact, it’s suitable for medical area applications.

• Liquid silicone rubber has demonstrated superior compability with human tissue and body fluids. Liquid Silicone can meet medical requirements and required approvals like UPS Class VI, BfR XV, FDA 21 CFR 177.2600, FDA (510K) required certifications (ISO 10993 ) and ect.

  EL LR3003.pdf3003-50BMSDS.pdf3038-50 ISO10993-10 en(1).pdfLiquid Silicone Rubber FDA.PDF

Conclusion 1:

With higher and higher requirement of material safety. More and more food, water and medical contact products or device will choose LSR & liquid silicone rubber as materials in future.

2. Higher Precision and More Stable Design/Quality

• Liquid silicone is low viscosity material, which can fluid to fill very thin and tiny space to produce complex shape products. So many complex structure, thin wall thickness products, and the products that need good appearance with good looking parting line, will choose liquid silicone as material and choose liquid injection molding process.

• And because LSR is pushed into the mold under pressure and liquid silicone keep cool inside the sprue and runner, and the needle valve control the amount of the material into each cavity in certain speed and pressure, so liquid silicone molded parts can achieve +-0.02mm tolerance and with stable design and quality.

• What’s more, because vulvanization only occurs inside the hot cavities, so do not have rubber flashing on the products, and can also save time to trim the rubber flashing from the products.

Conclusion 2:

For complicated structure products, high quality and dimension requirement, liquid silicone rubber injection molding is a trend.

3. Superior Properties Compared to Solid Silicone

• Wide hardness range of 10 to 80 durometer Shore A

• Wide operating temperature (-58°F to 392°F)

• Excellent UV and ozone resistance

• Excellent electrical insulation

• Excellent for outdoor environmental sealing

• Good choice for submerged sealing (IP67 and NEMA 6) and overmolded parts.

  
  

4. Forming Methods--Higher Production Efficiency

• Solid silicone is compression molded, and after milling, need to cut it into a size and thickness suitable for molding, and then placed in silicone mold, manual demoulding. The whole process is long and curing time is also longer than liquid injection molding.
  

• While for liquid silicone rubber, when the moulding started, the barrel of the injection machine is extracted from the A and B groups at a ratio of 1:1 and thoroughly mixed automatically and then  injected into the mold cavities through a vulcanization screw at a certain speed under certain pressure. And with shorter curing time, the liquid rubber sillicone parts come out in the mold with no or less rubber flashings, which not only save production time but also save trim time. So for large quantity products, liquid silicone rubber injection mold is a better choice. And with the development of economy and technology, liquid injection molding is tending to be completerly automatically.

In Conclusion:

Normal Solid Silicone is generally used in daily necessities and industrial accessories and auto parts such as silicone keypads, silicone gasket and parts do not have high material safety requirement and do not have strict tolerance. For complicated structure parts with tight tolerance and accessories in medicare and babycare that need high material safety requirement and related FDA ,CE certifications, Liquid Silicone is the best and must choice. As the safety of liquid rubber silicone is much higher than solid silicone,which is a food material with high transparency and high safety. It is not added with auxiliary materials such as vulcanizing agent during molding, and it is FDA/LFGB compliant and has direct access to food and the human body.