Japan’s Nissei Eco Company Ltd., through co-development efforts with SABIC Innovative Plastics, has created a product it says can significantly reduce the environmental impact of wire harness insulation.
The ECO-01 tubing, a wire insulation product made from SABIC's Flexible Noryl resin, is inherently flame retardant (FR) and free of environmentally harmful heavy metals. The tubing also provides OEMs of home appliances and other products with high heat performance without expensive secondary operations.
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Michio Inamura, CEO, Nissei Eco says, “The key to this success was replacing potentially harmful flame-retardant materials without sacrificing high performance or raising costs. Flexible Noryl resin met all of our requirements for the new ECO-01 product line and, thanks to this exceptional SABIC Innovative Plastics material, our customers are very pleased with what the new tubing has to offer.”
SABIC says its Flexible Noryl resin for wire insulation offers OEMs a significantly better material choice vs. traditional polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which contains halogen chlorine. Not only is the resin non-halogenated to help customers meet global environmental requirements, but the FR material also surpasses PVC in wear resistance.
As measured by the JASO-D-608-92 abrasion test, the resin has much higher abrasion resistance than that of PVC. The resin surpasses other non-halogenated materials such as flame-retardant polyethylene (PE) in terms of affordability and processing ease.
Because Flexible Noryl resin delivers high-temperature performance and can meet the requirements of UL105C, it does not require cross linking using electron beam radiation – a process that is necessary for flame-retardant PE. Cross linking adds time and cost, notes Nissei Eco, and also makes the material stiffer and harder to process.
The ECO-01 tubing for wire harnesses has been specified by several home appliance manufacturers in Japan, while Nissei Eco is actively working to gain specifications around the globe.
SOURCE: Plastemart.com
