Plastic as an appealing bearing material at higher temperatures
Metals are replaced by polymers more and more often. STASSKOL developed the ESKAFLON 449 as a particularly attractive bearing material at higher temperatures. If you replace metals with polymerss, in addition to the high chemical resistance, the low density of the plastics is a great advantage, because this saves weight. However, the rigidity of the materials must stand up to the challenges of the application.
In order to increase the strength, we have introduced hard coal, carbon fibers, but also fabric mats consisting of carbon fibers into the high-performance polymers. With particularly high filling levels, we achieve mechanical properties that come very close to those of metallic materials. In order to be able to achieve filling levels of over 50 vol.-%, STASSKOL has further developed hot compression molding as a processing method.
An advantageous side-effect of the strongly increased rigidity of the polymers is the reduction of their thermal expansion. PTFE even has a very high thermal expansion coefficient compared to other polymers.
With our ESKAFLON 449, we have succeeded in reducing the thermal expansion coefficient