(Thousands of Colors monitor setting highly recommended)

COLORS FOR PLASTICS AND COATINGS

INORGANICS AND ORGANICS

Plastics and coatings can be colored with either inorganic or organic chemicals. Pigments are insoluble materials that must be mechanically dispersed in the polymer (by default we might assume a dye is a colorant that is soluble but I would like to find a reference to back this up.)

DISPERSION

Solid pigment particles must be dispersed mechanically such that each pigment article is covered with binder molecules,without any air trapped between the binder and the pigment. For a coating, the pigment is added to a part of the resin and a grind may be carried out to simultaneously reduce the pigment particle size, and disperse the pigment in binder.

COLOR CUBES

All the pigment has to be dispersed in binder, but the pigment can be dispersed in a fraction of the binder. Assume the pigment loading for an object is 5% by mass (for every 95 g of binder there is 5 g of pigment--this simple calculation ignores the presence of other solids.) It may be that the pigment can be dispersed in binder at 40% without difficulty. The operator may prefer to disperse the pigment at 40% and then in the end, mix 1 gram of pigment dispersed binder to 7 grams of virgin binder (no pigment impregnation) to get the desired 5% pigment loading.

OTHER PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE

Pigment Specifications to consider when selecting a pigment (may also apply to a dye.)

CLASSES OF COLORANTS

Azo colorants

VAT PIGMENTS

Anthramide Orange	VO 15
Anthrapyrimidine Yellow	PR 108
Flavanthrone Yellow	PY 112
Indanthrone Blue	PB 60
Isoviolanthroneviolet	PV 31
Perinone Orange	PO 43
Pyranthrone Orange	PO 40

PIGMENT COLORS AND THE CHEMICALS

(Note: unless otherwise indicated, there was no color image available to indicate the hue, saturation, and brightness of the pigment.)