Engineering Resources
Insulating & Jacketing
Today's wire user has a wide range of plastic insulating materials to choose from, and yet the selection of a particular dielectric for a specific application frequently is a trade-off in properties. Each plastic has both desirable characteristics and practical limitations, and the user must decide what can be sacrificed to assure overall satisfactory service. In some cases, a solution lies in using composite insulations, where two or more materials are combined to take advantage of the desirable characteristics of each. The combination is usually better than the sum of its parts. But even with composites, the result often represents a compromise between what is theoretically desirable and what is commercially available and economically supportable.
