Mixing metal powders into plastic turns final compound grey. Is there a way to mask fine (10 - 20 um) powder? I tried mixing powder with plastic and TiO2 (light grey material), cross-linking plastic into thermoset, grinding with sandpaper into powder. Using this powder gave slightly lighter material. It seems that grey metal powder specs were still visible. Any ideas?
What color is your plastic initially?
If transparent or translucent, then just creating phase boundaries will change the look of your material. If it was white, then you might need to make sure none of your metal particles reach the surface if that does not defeat the original purpose. Moreover, TiO2 is also the composition of a well known white pigment .. and it is not strictly a metal powder either. Not quite sure what you need.
Thank you for your feedback, Tarmo.
Application is quite straightforward - it is metal detectable plastic for food industry. All packaged food goes through metal detector and any contamination will be picked up. Mixing in ~10% of certain fine stainless steel powder does the job. Since the standard colour for those type of products is blue, gray powder does not have much effect on the final shade of blue. Same goes for green, but it really has an impact on yellow (turning greenish) and red (turning brown). You can actually see small bits of gray powder on surface. I don't think restricting metal particles from surface is not feasible in extrusion or moulding process. Idea with TiO2 was to mix stainless steel powder in as bright as possible matrix and later use now much brighter masterbatch as an additive. It seems that it help a bit but still you can see grey specs on surface which tamper colour.
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