Industrial & consumer goods
Boost the performance of a range of rubber applications
Our range of minerals is key ingredients for boosting the performance of rubber applications ranging from domestic appliance seals and hoses to footwear and flooring.
Used as multifunctional fillers and processing aids, our kaolin and carbonates improve the properties of conventional or thermoplastic rubber products such as gaskets and seals for domestic appliances, cables, shoe soles, flooring and mattresses.
Industrial flooring must be resistant to wear and tear, have excellent non-slip properties and provide a comfortable cushioned feel that can endure heavy-duty use without losing properties. Other desirable properties include superior resistance to marking and excellent compression set along with low VOC emissions.
Rubber flooring is typically based on SBR and natural rubbers. Our semi-reinforcing kaolins are often blended with precipitated silica to provide good abrasion and tear properties in SBR and natural rubber flooring.
We recommend:
Industrial gaskets and seals are often injection molded articles that are significantly deformed during production. In particular, a washing machine seal undergoes extreme stretching during de-molding. As such, the gasket/seal must have outstanding hot tear resistance coupled with excellent tension and compression set properties.
We recommend:
Shoe soles need to be extremely tough and highly resistant to abrasion and tear.
- Kaolin such as our Suprex™ and Mercap grades improve the mechanical properties and abrasion resistance of rubber shoe soles.
- Calcium carbonate is used in rubber, TPE, PVC and polyurethane footwear as a non-reinforcing diluent to reduce costs.
- Ball clay and air-float kaolins are used in the rubber shoe soles - we recommend our Suprex, Windsor, Aike, Martin #5, Micro Bond and M33 grades to improve reinforcement and abrasion resistance.
Our solutions are designed to optimize the functional properties of your product performance, while also improving your manufacturing processes. Imerys products can reduce your total cost of production, logistic costs as well as raw material costs.
Our minerals offer the following benefits:
- Reduced shrinkage
- Improved impact resistance and durability through better particle packing
- Improved flexural strength
- Optimized particle size for form formation and tuft adhesion
- Improved viscosity for production
- Boosted loading levels
- Replace higher cost resins with minerals
- Improved reinforcement
- Improved dispersion
We recommend:
- ReMined 15
- ReMined 40
- 200-W
- CC-103
Our Polcarb® calcium carbonates are good solutions for optimizing costs in latex foam mattresses.
Many minerals are an excellent anti-sticking agents in compound handling, processing and part manufacturing. Coarse and platy kaolin and carbonate grades are ideal to prevent unvulcanized rubber-to-rubber adhesion in tire demolding, the manufacture of rubber goods and cable compounds.
We recommend:
- Imerseal 75 carbonate – a surface modified, ultra-fine particle size carbonate
- Glomax® LL kaolin – a medium particle size calcined kaolin
Related minerals
Kaolin
Kaolin is a rock from which the clay mineral kaolinite is derived. This one has been used for millennia as the principal ingredient in porcelain tableware. Today Imerys kaolins bring critical properties to a host of end applications ranging from paper to paints, fiberglass to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
