Consumer products, packaging, plastic containers and many other industries use plastic sheets in thermoforming processes such as vacuum forming, pressure forming and inline thermoforming. The automotive, aerospace, petrochemical, food and marine industries use raw, thick gauged plastic sheets and blocks to machine industry-specific parts. Read More…
Leading Manufacturers
All Plastics and Fiberglass, Inc.
Mobile, AL | 800-226-1134All Plastics and Fiberglass performs fabrication for fiberglass and plastics. Among the standard products we produce are ducts, grating, structural shapes, pipe hangers and tanks. We do custom fabrication on tanks and pipe hangers. We also make prefabricated piping systems, handrails and more. We have built a reputation on high quality and superior service for more than two decades.
Cope Plastics, Inc.
Alton, IL | 800-851-5510Cope Plastics maintains one of the industry's largest inventories, stocking a wide variety of plastics to meet our customers’ needs for engineering materials, sheet plastics, specialty industrial products and tubing. We assist with design and we manufacture production parts in our ISO-certified facilities.
San Diego Plastics, Inc.
National City, CA | 619-477-4855San Diego Plastics, Inc has a huge selection of plastic materials. Call us today for plastic sheet, rod, tube, film, expanded foam sheet, corrugated sheet, boards, panels and structured sheet. An assortment of acrylic, polycarbonate, PVC, polypropylene & polyethylene in various colors, patterns, textures, thicknesses & grades.
Auburn Plastics & Rubber
Indianapolis, IN | 317-352-1565Since 1967, Auburn Plastics & Rubber has been a leading manufacturer of plastic and rubber products. We are a family-owned company built on creating relationships with our customers and manufacturing high-quality products. Auburn Plastics & Rubber is your one-stop shop for all your plastic needs.
CS Hyde Company
Lake Villa, IL | 800-461-4161CS Hyde has been providing high-end plastic materials since our founding in 1996, and has become a leading distributor and converter to a wide variety of markets. Materials we have available include Teflon Fluoroplastic, PTFE, Mylar®, Kevlar®, and more. We utilize the most high-tech converting equipment to provide superior products to our customers in a short time frame. It is our continuous...
Professional Plastics
Fullerton, CA | 888-995-7767Supplier of engineering plastic materials—plastic sheets, plastic rods, plastic tubing & film. Products include Delrin®, Nylon, Teflon®, Vespel®, Torlon®, PEEK, Techtron®, PPS, Semitron®, Ultem®, PVDF, PVC, Acrylic, Polycarbonate, PCTFE, PFA, FEP and more.
Plastic Sheet Manufacturers Manufacturers List
Plastic Sheet Manufacturers - All Plastics and Fiberglass, Inc.Plastic sheets are used as signage, and clear acrylic and Plexiglas sheets make excellent windows, large picture frames, barriers and point of purchase displays. Plastic sheeting is extruded the same way plastic channels and profiles are, with an additional end process. Plastic sheet manufacturers feed plastic pellets or flakes into a hopper that then feeds the raw plastic into a screw conveyor.
The screw conveyor shears and pushes the material along, heating and "plasticizing" the pellets into molten plastic. As the conveyor continues to turn, molten plastic is pushed out through a flat die. Instead of being instantly cooled, the flat shape is pulled and stretched by grips into wider sheets, which are then fed into a series of round metal cooling "calenders" and are ultimately wound onto spools.
Thicker gauge sheets are cut and stacked flat, ready to be thermoformed into many different shapes. Dies can also be round, so that as the plastic is extruded through the conveyor its tube shape is sheared in half, and both top and bottom are stretched into flat sheets separately. Sometimes additives and coating resins are added to the surface of the plastic sheet during the calendering process.
Plastic sheets may be fabricated from a number of different plastic materials, including HDPE, LDPE, PETG, PVC, polypropylene, polystyrene, vinyl and acrylic; different applications call for different properties of strength, flexibility, hardness, corrosion resistance and color, which is why so many styles of plastic have been created.
Some industries use plastic sheets with minor alterations for applications such as cutting boards, business signs, Plexiglas windows and silk-screening. Vacuum and pressure forming plastics manufacturers, however, choose plastic sheets with fine to medium gauges to be further processed into three dimensional products.
Vacuum formed products are made by heating a plastic sheet until it is flexible, then introducing a male mold underneath the plastic sheet and vacuuming the heated plastic sheet to the mold so it takes the mold's exact shape. The pressure forming process is identical, except that a female mold is introduced and the heated plastic sheet is vacuumed into it.
Blister packs and many packaging items are fabricated this way, as well as disposable utensils, containers, bathtubs and showers, marine seats and parts and all other hollow, shaped plastic parts made for industrial, commercial and residential use.
