Flame Retardant Gaskets
Flame Retardant Gaskets
We manufacture all types of gaskets at NEDC. One of the more common requests is for flame retardant gaskets. Customers look for UL94 listed materials because their product is also UL listed. This makes it easier to meet their requirements.
UL 94 discusses flame retardancy of materials. To be more specific it discusses how long the material will support a flame in different orientations and for different types of materials. At NEDC, we have a number of different materials to choose from when we discuss flame retardancy. There are organic options for flame retardant materials – however, most times we are selling silicone-based products to meet flame retardant requirements. This blog post deals with gasketing materials only, however many thermal pads and RF absorbers also are UL94 listed.
Levels of Flame Retardancy
UL94 is widely accepted as a small scale flammability test. It measures the flammability of plastics/rubber materials. It has a number of different ratings/tests for different type materials and their applications.
Tests:
-Thin Material Vertical Burning Test(VTM-0, VTM-1, VTM-2)
-Radiant Panel Flame Spread Test
-Horizontal Burning Foamed Material Test(HBF, HF-1, HF-2)
-Vertical Burning Test(5VA, 5VB)
-Vertical Burning Test(V0, V1, V2)
-Horizontal Burning Test(HB)
In this blog post, we are strictly looking at the UL94V, and UL Horizontal Burn Foamed test that can have the following outcomes:
UL94 V0(most stringent), UL94V1(good), UL94V2(least stringent of the test).
HF-1(most stringent), HF-2(good), HBF(least string of the test)
