Tufnol Laminated Plastic
What is TUFNOL?
TUFNOL is a proprietary brand of laminated plastic material. It has been made in Birmingham, England since the mid-1920s and is one of the pioneering types of resin-bonded plastic materials used for engineering components.
Many people know of laminates as hard, thin sheet materials used for kitchen worktops, flooring and alike. These are 'decorative laminates'. TUFNOL is an 'industrial laminate' that does not have a specially coloured or patterned surface layer but it is made in big chunks as well as thin sheets, and these are used to make components for machinery and industrial purposes. It is usually brown to white in colour, depending on the grade, and can be made in solid sheets up to 225mm (9 inches) in thickness, and also in round rods and tubes.
Why use Tufnol?
TUFNOL is a non-metallic material with very useful properties. It hard, rigid and strong, light in weight (about a fifth of the weight of steel and half the weight of aluminium). It is a good electrical insulator, some grades extremely good, and is also resistant to long-term immersion in water. It is exceptionally resistant to weathering, much more so than most other plastics, and it has been used for components in outdoor and marine environments for many decades without corroding or degrading. Some grades are very resistant to wear in applications involving friction and can be lubricated with water as well as oil or other conventional lubricants. This makes them extremely useful in marine applications.
Many Tufnol Grades for Different Uses
By using different varieties of resin with various types of cloth or paper, many different grades of TUFNOL can be produced. These can be divided into three main types:-,
- grades made from layers of paper - known as SRBP, or 'synthetic resin bonded paper'.
- grades made from layers of cotton cloth - known as SRBF, or 'synthetic resin bonded fabric'
- grades made from layers of glass fibre cloth - the most common of which is epoxy glass laminate.