Seattle, WA, USA--(Jobwerx News)--Basf's thermoplastic polyester, used to produce oven handles, maintains a cost-effective gas assist plastics injection molding cycle.

Newly introduced in North America, Petra® 7010 thermoplastic polyester polyethylene terephthalate (PET), for oven handle applications, delivers good surface finish, part strength, processing efficiency attributes and can handle high heat temperatures.

This new grade Petra PET, specifically developed by BASF for oven handle applications, achieves excellent surface appearance properties in gas-assist plastics injection mold tooling.

BASF’s Petra 7010 PET provides excellent surface finish, especially in large parts produced using a gas-assist plastics injection molding process. Petra 7010 PET allows for a wide processing window to achieve a resin-rich surface without a gas hesitation line that can occur in the gas-assist injection molding process. The new BASF product also delivers excellent strength and stiffness performance at high temperatures, and meets oven manufacturers’ requirements for resistance to food stains at high heat, solvents and oven cleaning materials.

In addition to the improved surface finish properties, BASF’s Petra 7010 PET grade enables part cost reductions and increased production rates compared to painted metal, thermoset bulk molding compound (BMC) and other thermoplastics.

“Petra 7010 PET achieved significant cost reductions to produce oven handles by enabling gas assist to be incorporated into the plastics injection molding process, which resulted in a 50 percent weight reduction from the metal and BMC versions,” said Joe Venner, Director of Product Management for BASF’s Engineering Plastics business in North America. “This was accomplished without sacrificing the required high temperature stiffness and strength required for oven handles.”

According to Venner, BASF’s development efforts marked the first time a multi-cavity gas-assist mold was used to produce plastic oven handles, which helped to reduce part costs and cycle times. “The major challenge was to achieve a high-gloss surface and a uniform gas channel in all cavities while maintaining a cost-effective molding cycle,” he said. “The performance properties of our Petra 7010 PET grade enabled this to be accomplished, which will be a great benefit to our customers.”

Oven handles made from Petra 7010 PET are available in the standard colors of black, white and bisque, and demonstrate good color retention properties even at self-cleaning oven temperatures.

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