Needs for reuse of LAPEROS^®LCP

Characterized by its thinness and high flowability, LAPEROS^®is the prime example of a super engineering plastic. It boasts superior heat resistance and the unusual property of greater mechanical strength the thinner it is, as well as high dimensional precision. Due to these properties, it is frequently used in the ultra-miniature precision connectors found in mobile tablets, smartphones and other cutting-edge IT devices that are being made increasingly smaller.
Normally, when molding these connectors, they must be attached to sprues and runners, but, once they are molded, these attachments are thrown away. As the size of the products being manufactured grows smaller, the percentage of sprues and runners gets higher, causing a problem of more waste.
With society becoming increasingly concerned about the needs for more effective utilization of resources, our LAPEROS customers expressed a desire to use their sprues and runners as a recyclable resource that can make up to 80% of the resin content used in product molding.

Working towards certification

High temperatures and shearing forces (forces applied to the materials when performing mixing and high-speed injection) are applied to the sprues and runners during the molding process. The use of recycled materials might have an impact on material quality. To meet the customers’ request, we had to check and certify the quality would not be affected by the use of recycled materials.
Thus, we set out to obtain additional UL certification showing that the quality (physical properties) at a recycled material usage rate of 80% is equivalent to that of a product made from virgin materials.
Before applying to the UL for this additional certification, we needed to confirm for ourselves, in-house, whether or not the quality required for certification could be achieved at a recycled material usage rate of 80%.
We first performed molding using virgin materials, after which we manufactured recycled materials. Prescribed amounts of recycled and virgin materials were mixed together and molded to make the test pieces. They were subjected to testing to see whether its physical properties held up as well as a test piece made of 100% virgin materials.

CHECK POINT

Additional UL certification process^*2

In-house testing

Application to UL

The process of obtaining certification for the recycled materials, which first required the creation of recycled materials, and then the comparison of test pieces results with those of virgin materials, was much more involved than the certification process for just the virgin materials.
In the end, we were able to obtain additional UL certification of S475 as capable of achieving required product quality, even at a recycled material usage rate of 80%.

Yellow Card^{*3(UL certification documentation)}