Recreation & Toys

Toys and recreational items easily divide into two groups - one eminently disposable, the other intended to provide entertainment and satisfaction over an extended period. Ticona's engineering resins are excellent materials for the latter group, the durable toys.

Apart from that excited moment when the package is first opened, toys don't get a lot of respect - tossed here and dropped there, buried in the sandbox, used to fight mock battles - a toy's life can be rough. And that's where Ticona's resins stand up to the punishment. Beginning with the excellent moldability, high-gloss surface and wide-ranging colorability of Celcon®/Hostaform® acetal copolymers (POM), the use of these materials is a great way to make sure the product has visual impact straight out of the package. Then, the toughness, durability and fatigue and scratch resistance of these resins ensures the toy's ability to provide many hours of fun, its appearance and functionality unimpaired. The acetal copolymers have another important property - low coefficient of friction and good wear resistance - making them especially useful for movable parts, such as are found in radio-controlled toys or snap-together assembly toys.

Moving outdoors, we find Ticona's resins appearing in applications as diverse as in-line skates, skis, snow boards, golf clubs and athletic shoes, to name a few. Some of the useful properties of Vandar® thermoplastic alloys that led to their use in skis and snowboards include high impact resistance even at low temperatures, strength and stiffness, and colorability and printability. In particular, printability by sublimation printing allows boards to be decorated with photo-quality art that is actually printed into the polymer.

Golf clubs, tennis racquets and lacrosse sticks all have in common that the effective part is at the end of a shaft. High stiffness and light weight of the shaft in tennis and lacrosse equipment reduce player fatigue and, by minimizing impact deflection, contribute to improving ball control. This is particularly desirable in golf clubs, where Fortron® polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) makes an important contribution to the stiffness and toughness of composite club shafts.