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HDPE Dog Chews: Can I increase strength of HDPE?
- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by
.
Hello all
I have just started exploring the world of recycled plastics and the first thing I would like to do is to create a few toys for my dog. She is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with some serious jaw power!
I’ve been playing around shaping some bones out of HDPE chips, simply melting a load of material and using a vice to compress it into a block shape. They are strong, but not quite strong enough! She can chew bits off the edges pretty quickly.
I was wondering if anybody could suggest any additives (non toxic) or additional processes I could use to make the material even harder??
Any help would be much appreciated by myself and Betty (dog)
Thanks
Tom
I have seen some articles on increasing the strength of plastics by adding high-temp fibers to the mix, including #1 PETE. I am guessing it would probably work best mixed into the chips first. It might clog extruders though. Polyethylene rope or concrete reinforcing fibers would be a good source of the fibers.
Also, HDPE plastics can be worked with standard woodworking tools, so if you round them off, it would probably reduce chipping.
Not sure if dog owners would like their dogs to be chewing on plastic. Yet there seems to be a lot of toys made for dogs, out of plastic.
Thy Graphite/Graphene.
Plastic is the go-to dog chew material really. The best is Nylon – Nylabone being the market leader. Problem is finding a source that is ‘food-safe’.
I’m not sure you want a harder material rather than tougher. The harder material is likely to crack off in sharp flakes. What about going the other way and trying LDPE to make a more chewy toy? Lots of LDPE food container parts around. Or mix with HDPE to experiment with a range of hardness and toughness…Looks like you have a capable testing facility.
I’ve tried HDPE and unfortunately that has been shredded pretty quickly. Havent tried mixing hdpe and ldpe though. How would I go about mixing them together?
That’s a good question. If you were injecting or extruding, just mixing may be good enough. If you are oven heating and then pressing, I would try cutting it into smaller pieces and then fold and press or fold and twist a few times during the melt process.
I saw someone online melting PE in high temperature cooking oil. Not really that good for most things but for a chew toy that may work OK, though more likely to eat the parts.
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