Soft and comfortable materials are an important part of life, forming everything from mattresses, cushions and furniture upholstery to insulating materials and toys. Foam rubber is the common element in most such materials, which, as its name implies, is a soft, firm latex rubber made spongy by the addition of air bubbles. Foam rubber has a variety of industrial, commercial and residential applications.
Production
Foam rubber is created by a number of different processing technologies, but the two most commonly used are the Talalay process and the Dunlop method. The Dunlop method follows two different techniques: continuous foaming and beater or batch process for the production of foam rubber. Both involve the introduction of air into latex.
Rubber is a generic term that includes both synthetic and natural materials. Natural rubber includes urethane foam, latex foam, expanded rubber and sponge rubber. Foam rubber commonly refers to latex foam rubber, an invention of the Dunlop Rubber Company (UK) in 1929. Foam rubber was manufactured using natural latex initially, but latex was replaced with synthetic rubber owing to its disadvantages (bad odor, high shrinkage and poor aging).
Applications
It is commonly used to create face masks. It is also used to make prosthetics. A skilled creator can make authentic looking masks and prosthetics with foam rubber.
Convincing facial prosthetics allow someone to dramatically change their appearance. Because of the foam rubber’s ability to create realistic changes in someone”s appearance, it is widely used in the movie and music video industry. Although it takes a skilled craftsman to create realistic looking changes to someone’s appearance, foam latex is remarkably easy to work with and makes the job much easier.
Once the foam rubber is shaped and baked, it forms a lightweight material for the actor to wear. It is also flexible, which means that the actor can move freely while wearing the prosthetic. While anyone seeing the prosthetics in person would not be fooled into believing that they are real, onscreen they look very believable.
Raw Materials
Foam rubber is commercially manufactured using polyol, polyisocyanates and other chemicals/additives, for example, flame retardants, fillers, cross-linking agents (such astert-butyl peroxybenzoate, reffered as TBPB, the CAS number is 614-45-9) and coloring materials. Polyisocyanates and polyol are liquid-based polymers that react with water to form polyurethane. The reaction is accelerated by the use of amine and tin catalysts, allowing a greater volume of foam rubber to be manufactured.
Advantages
The material will deteriorate over time and excessive usage. It commonly loses its flexibility after two to three years. Foam rubber must be kept away from solvents and high heat. Natural, latex-based foam rubber provides low resistance to aging, petroleum and chemicals.
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