Introducing Acetal!

Acetal, or POM (polyoxymethylene) is a semi-crystalline thermoplastic resin that is widely used here at Simport. Histology cassettes are one of our main productions and all of these cassettes are molded out of Acetal.

Why? Because this material is a nylon-like flexible, yet solid plastic. It offers the high strength required to insure that closed cassettes remain closed and precious tissues are not lost.  The stiffness and stability also contribute to the security achieved with this plastic. At Simport, we use it for injection molding.

This resin is not sensitive to moisture, an important feature if it is designed to be immersed in liquid most of the time. This is the case with histology cassettes. It offers high resistance to most chemicals including the alcohols and solvents used in tissue processing. The high heat resistance offered by acetal makes it suitable for heating to melted paraffin temperatures. Its excellent mechanical properties also come in handy when manufacturing parts that include a hinge that must function flawlessly, and a hook to keep it closed. It is friction and fatigue resistant and is a material that is FDA-compliant.

Delrin® is an homopolymer acetal developed by DuPont but its somewhat improved characteristics don’t offer any advantage for the histology products that we mold at Simport. So we work with copolymers that perform and have performed extremely well for us for decades. The resin used is not the end of the story. Expertise in mold design and injection molding intelligence is also required. This explains why some histology cassettes, all made of the same material, don’t all perform equally well. You can rest assured that Simport’s almost 50 years of experience can bring the best out of such a superior material and support histology laboratories worldwide with a great finished product!