Jan 28 2009
Eastman Chemical Company announced today that its customer, Hawaii Medical, LLC, in Pembroke, Mass., will use Eastman Tritan™ in its GumDrop™ pacifiers. Tritan™, a new-generation copolyester, balances the properties of easy processing, clarity, dishwasher durability, toughness, and heat and chemical resistance.
"To meet the demand for lightweight, low-profile silicone pacifiers, we needed a material that had design flexibility and could be processed easily to fit the requirements for our preemie and newborn pacifier product line. We challenged our molder, Extreme Molding, LLC in Watervliet, N.Y., to find a material with these characteristics," said Read McCarty, president and CEO of Hawaii Medical. "Extreme Molding tried many different materials until it found Eastman Tritan™ copolyester, which had all the property and molding characteristics it needed to execute our design."
Hawaii Medical and Extreme Molding selected Eastman Tritan™ for its ease of processing and because it provided additional design opportunities. The companies valued the innovative properties of the new copolyester, such as its lightweight quality and high-heat resistance for sterilization, and the fact that Tritan™ is manufactured without bisphenol-A (BPA).
The GumDrop™ pacifier is designed with a rigid plastic guard, made from the new copolyester, and is completely overmolded with silicone. The overmolding process creates a single-body construction that won't separate. In working with Eastman Tritan™, Extreme Molding realized that a significant advantage of the material is its enhanced bondability to silicone, which is traditionally a challenging material in which to adhere. The pacifier surface is soft, yet the rigid plastic allows the pacifier to retain its curved shape.
"We have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our clients and customers in regard to the GumDrop™ pacifiers. Customers feel confident in our product and know they are offering newborns and preemies a safe, quality product," McCarty said.
GumDrop™ pacifiers are available in green, pink, blue and orange, and come in a newborn size as well as a smaller preemie size.