How many levels does the quality of silicone products have?
How many different levels does your silicone product have? Is it a food grade silicone or a regular silicone product? As a professional silicone product supplier, we encounter customers asking us these questions every day.
The main factors affecting the final quality of silicone products are the quality of raw materials and the production process of the factory. For mature silicone suppliers, the production process is reduced in order to meet the construction schedule, and the general production process can meet the standards. Therefore, the main reason that affects the final quality level of silicone products is raw materials.
According to the testing standards of silicone raw materials and silicone products, we generally classify silicone products into the following three grades.
Ordinary silicone products.
Ordinary silicone products are generally used in industrial production, product parts or other products that are not in contact with the human body. This type of product is low in price and does not perform well in appearance, smell and durability, and will grow with time. The color becomes darker, the product becomes harder, the surface is yellow or dark lines appear. In daily life, we can easily observe this phenomenon on poor quality silicone phone cases.
FDA grade silicone
Most of our company’s customers are from the United States, unless the customer has specified requirements, such as do not care about product quality, only need low-priced products, or require LFGB, otherwise our products are generally produced according to the requirements of the US market. , that is, the FDA level. 100% passed the FDA test, which means our products reach the food level.
LFGB standard
most of LFGB products are requested by European customers. Some consumers think that LFGB-level products are higher than FDA according to market price, so LFGB-level products are better. That is not correct in fact. The two test base on different test standards. That have its own test focus . From the inspection project, the LFGB test items are more than FDAm and it need longer testing time. However, when we talk about contact with the human body and is harmless to the human body, there is no big gap between them .
In addition, about platinum silicone and pinch test.
It is worth mentioning that silicone products, whether it is FDA grade or LFGB grade, have a certain smell when they just leave the production line, which is slightly irritating. This will naturally disappear after 2-3 days of product placement. The concept of platinum silicone was proposed by the Germans. They think that silicone products can do better when it produced. If they do not have this smell after leaving the factory, higher detection standards are proposed. Platinum silicone, this kind of product is more common in medical products. In common household products area, due to cost considerations, do not reach platinum silicone very much. Many manufacturers claim that all products are platinum silicone, but in fact they add bake work on the basis of LFGB, so the taste is removed. If there is no professional testing, there is no way to define whether a product is platinum silicone.
Pinch test: Some consumers or buyers use the pinch test to judge the quality of silicone. It is considered that the blushing silicone product is a poor quality product. In fact, this is not the case. Even platinum-grade silicone products may have white fine lines when the product is thicker and the temperature is lower.To define the actual quality level of silicone products, it is still necessary to rely on professional testing institutions.
How does a consumers test the quality of silicone products?
The easiest way is to cut a small portion of the silicone product pieces and smell the cross section. The food grade silicone cut surface has no taste, or has a subtle fragrance. The burnt ash is white, and the cut surface of ordinary grade silicone products. The smell is heavy, pungent, and the ash that is burned out is black.
If you has the longer used silicone product , you can also directly distinguish their food grade silicone in terms of transparency, chemical properties, and softness. Ordinary silicone will appear yellow or dark lines as time goes on.
Last ,the demand for silicone products in each industry is different, so the level of silicone products also will be different. It is not to say that food grade silicone is better than ordinary grade silicone, each level product has its own advantages.
