Plastic Welds Tensile Testing

Specimen Gripping

As more and more components of cars are made using plastic, testing must be done to ensure that different plastic components will stay bonded together. From dashboards to gas caps, polymeric materials ranging from nylon to polypropylene can be found throughout vehicles. Plastic welding techniques such as vibration and laser welding are used to join different plastic components, in addition to traditional adhesive methods. To ensure that the bonds are sufficiently strong, tensile testing can be performed both during product development and quality control.

THE CHALLENGE

Testing bonded materials can often result in gripping challenges. The specimen tabs are often not in a straight line, which can cause off-center loading and inaccurate results.

our Solution

Intron’s advanced screw action and 5 kN and 10 kN pneumatic side action grips can be adjusted to be offset to ensure that the bonded area is in the center of the load string and the load is applied axially. Both types of grips can be equipped with a variety of different jaw faces suitable for almost any material.

For testing specimens that cannot be gripped with traditional methods, Instron offers component test plates and t-slot tables enabling operators to grip specimens of any shape and size.

Learn more about our automotive solutions