Minnesota Rubber's sucess in the design and application of engineering thermoplastic materials since the mid-60s, along with our decades of experience in thermoset rubber compounds, has been invaluable in the development of our thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) processing technology.

Thermoplastic Elastomers

Thermoplastic elastomers have emerged in recent years as a growing and expanding third category of moldable compounds. Their performance characteristics position them somewhere between thermoset rubber and traditional plastics, with properties of each that make them ideal for a variety of demanding parts applications. Rubber-like characteristics of TPEs include their ability to recover rapidly from large deformations. Yet, like standard plastic materials, parts made from TPE compounds can be melted and reprocessed.

Thermoplastic elastomers, like their predecessors, offer both advantages and limitations in terms of their performance. In most cases, the flex fatigue resistance of TPE compounds, for example, is much higher than that of rubber, while their compression set is somewhat poorer.

TPEs are availible in the range of medium-soft (30 Shore A) to hard (80 Shore D).