Material selection is where a component's service life is really decided. Pick the wrong polymer and it cracks, wears or distorts long before it should. Get it right and the part quietly does its job for years. In mining, the demands are unusually harsh, so the choice matters more than most.

What we weigh up

Every application pulls in a slightly different direction, and the trick is balancing competing properties rather than chasing a single one.

• Wear and abrasion: how much grit and sliding contact the part will see
• Impact and toughness: whether it needs to flex and rebound or stay rigid
• Temperature range: stability across the swings a site can throw at it
• Chemical exposure: resistance to oils, fluids and contaminants

We work across a range of engineering thermoplastics as well as urethane, so we are not forcing every part into one material. A high-impact guard, a low-friction bush and a chemically-exposed housing each call for a different answer.

Because we both manufacture and understand the operating environment, we can steer the material choice early — before it is locked into the tooling — and save a costly rethink down the track.