Shielding

Plastic (and other) parts can be shielded from the environment to increase specific chemical resistance, for instance to survive disinfectants and hand sanitizers. Shielding often involves surface treatment of the relevant parts. This treatment can be implemented during or after the injection moulding process. This approach is beneficially applied to products that cannot be protected by other methods. However, employing a shielding strategy adds to manufacturing cost and as such is liable to competitive exploitation and attack. In other words competitors can design their parts to be produced without this step and hence gain a cost benefit and thus a competitive advantage. Therefore, shielding is almost always conceived to be a short-term solution to the problem of cracking and breaking plastic parts and assemblies.