What is Thermoplastic Rubber (TPR)?

Did you know about Thermoplastic Rubber (TPR)?

You might wonder about what are they used for, their benefits and does it safe to be used?

Relax~~We will explain it all to you one by one...

What is Thermoplastic Rubber (TPR)?

Thermoplastic Rubber or its short-form, TPR, is a material which has both the characteristics of rubber and plastic. Like all plastics when people talk about “rubber”, they do not usually specify what kind. There are many different kinds of rubber in the world, but all of they fall into two broad types, which are natural rubber (harvest from trees) and synthetic rubber (man-made/artificial).

As in its name TPR is thermoplastic, a form of synthetic rubber. This means that it can be melts into liquid when heated and becomes solid when cooled.

Unlike natural rubber which extracted from the rubber tree, TPR is man-made from the polymer Styrene-butadiene-styrene or known as SBS. SBS is a tertiary “block copolymer” which means that there are blocks of each monomer within the polymer instead of a random distribution.

Natural rubber and synthetic rubbers are similar in some ways, yet, they are made by entirely different processes and chemically quite different.

Once natural rubber has been vulcanized or cured, they are unable to recycle. On the other hand, TPR can be recycled or remolded as is does not have cross-linked bonds like natural rubber which allows it to re-crystallized several times.

Characteristics of TPR

Below will be some of the characteristics for TPR:

• Holds its shape
• It comes in varying levels of flexibility
• Flexibility can be increased by adding more rubber to the chemical makeup
• Can be formulated so the rubber smell is not noticeable
• Lightweight
• Can be colored to your requirements
• BPA Free

Other than that, TPR is chemical resistance to the following chemicals:

These are the basic information that you need to know about TPR.

Our products, thermal flasks and thermal food jars do have TPR install on them. The reason we use TPR in our thermal flasks and thermal food jars is to prevent them from falling to the floor accidentally.