The measure of a material’s resistance to the penetration of another (harder) body is called hardness.
In the plastics industry, hardness is used to evaluate the strength and resistance of a material. There are various measurement methods, including Shore hardness, Vickers hardness and Rockwell hardness, each of which measures different aspects of material properties. Hardness testing is important to determine the suitability of plastics for specific applications, particularly in areas where wear resistance and mechanical strength are critical.
Hardness values are often expressed in numbers, with higher values indicating harder materials.
The determination of hardness is a key aspect of material testing and development in the plastics industry.

Hardness in Injection Molding


Quality: Conventional hardness test: (1) Load up to the test load, (2) Creep process under test load, (3) Elastic recovery


Related topics:

Plastic testing

This glossary of plastic industry is provided by PLEXPERT Canada Inc.