carnauba-wax-aerosol-spray-epoxy-molding-applications

What is the right application for Carnauba Wax Aerosol Spray?

CAPLINQ has been field­ing ques­tions about what exact­ly the right time is to use car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray. To get bet­ter insight into this ques­tion, it may be best to start with the oppo­site ques­tion, and work our way back.

MJ Gordon Carnauba Wax

Even before we address this, let me start by say­ing that car­nau­ba wax, in its sol­id form is used by most epoxy mold com­pound for­mu­la­tors as one of the wax­es used to pre­vent mold stick­ing in the first place, and that car­nau­ba wax itself is then obvi­ous­ly com­pat­i­ble with epoxy mold com­pounds them­selves. Now let’s get back to the question.

In an ide­al pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment, the prod­uct mix would be low, the vol­ume would be high, and there would be no mold-chase changes, stuck plungers, clean­ing or main­te­nance repair. There would be a sin­gle epoxy-mold com­pound used with the per­fect bal­ance of adhe­sion pro­mot­ers to stick to the sub­strate (lead­frame or lam­i­nate) with the right lev­el of wax­es to per­fect­ly release from the mold and not cause any plunger stick­ing. In a case like this, not only would car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray be unnec­es­sary, mold release prod­ucts across the board would no longer be needed.

In a flex­i­ble, high-mix pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment, sprays will always have a place

Tak­ing it a step toward real­i­ty, we’ll throw in that reg­u­lar clean­ing and main­te­nance are a giv­en and every now and then a plunger may get stuck. Still, the prod­uct mix is low and vol­ume is high. In cas­es like this, the ide­al solu­tion would use a trans­fer mold­able mold con­di­tion­er after clean­ing which is less oper­a­tor depen­dent than an aerosol spray. Still, in this case, the car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray would be used to clean the plunger should it stick.

Look­ing at an even more real­is­tic sit­u­a­tion, the pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment has a high­er mix-vol­ume, mul­ti­ple prod­ucts are made in the same mold and mul­ti­ple mold com­pounds are used in the man­u­fac­ture of the semi­con­duc­tor devices. Fur­ther­more, mold com­pound tri­als to eval­u­ate new prod­ucts and new designs are test­ed. In this case, car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray has mul­ti­ple uses. As before, the prod­uct is used to clean stuck plungers, but it should also be used pri­or to test­ing of any new prod­ucts and after each time the mold is cleaned. It is also used to break in new mold tools and return oth­er ones to ser­vice after maintenance.

In sum­ma­ry, most pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ments would pre­fer not to use a spray, but the real­i­ty is that every pro­duc­tion floor DOES use a spray. The sprays used are typ­i­cal­ly sil­i­cone or PTFE (Teflon) based prod­ucts that are NOT com­pat­i­ble with epoxy mold­ing prod­ucts. These prod­ucts then DO con­t­a­m­i­nate the mold, may cause prod­uct delam­i­na­tion and often are very oper­a­tor sen­si­tive — which is a major rea­son why man­u­fac­tur­ers do look to go to a mold-con­di­tion­er type prod­ucts instead of aerosol sprays.

In these cas­es, car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray is a much supe­ri­or (albeit more expen­sive) prod­uct for the fol­low­ing reasons:

  • Unlike sil­i­cone and PTFE (Teflon) sprays, Car­nau­ba wax aerosol spray is com­pat­i­ble with epox­ies and engi­neer­ing plas­tics and can also be used for a wide-vari­ety of epoxy types instead of care­ful­ly select­ed mold-conditioner
  • Car­nau­ba wax aerosol sprays are flex­i­ble because of the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with a wide range of epoxy mold­ing compounds
  • The “Green” #909C Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Spray uses a “non-flam­ma­ble” sol­vent mak­ing it safe but rapid-drying

In short, high-vol­ume, sin­gle-prod­uct mold­ing lines may ben­e­fit from mov­ing to a less oper­a­tor-depen­dent aerosol spray appli­ca­tion; but in a flex­i­ble, high-mix pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment, sprays will always have a place, and car­nau­ba wax aerosol sprays are by far the pre­ferred choice in terms of com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance for both epox­ies and oth­er engi­neer­ing plastics.

CAPLINQ is a spe­cial­ty chem­i­cals, plas­tics, and prod­ucts com­pa­ny that offers a vari­ety of epoxy mold release agents includ­ing Chem­linq MRE-C909, MJ Gor­don Per­masil #909C, and Lin­qSil S‑100 mold release spray. Please con­tact us if you have any oth­er ques­tions about Car­nau­ba Wax.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

16 thoughts on “What is the right application for Carnauba Wax Aerosol Spray?

  1. I have just recent­ly pur­chased a prod­uct of clean­ing wax. It is basi­cal­ly a water­less wax. I have nev­er come across a prod­uct that is so, so good. So good does not real­ly describe this mag­nif­i­cent prod­uct. I pur­chased 2 cans at the time and I have almost gone through all of it. It con­tains CARNAUBA. Tru­ly a mag­nif­i­cent product.

  2. We are devel­op­ing a extrusion/molding process for an oral care prod­uct, por­tions of which will ulti­mate­ly be ingest­ed by the user.

    I found your descrip­tion of your mold release agents inter­est­ing. Espe­cial­ly the Water Sus­pen­sion ver­sion (Blue Label pack­age) as it implies a water emul­sion of the Car­nau­ba Wax. Is the emul­si­fi­er sys­tem in the Blue Label suit­able for use in a process where it will be in con­tact with an oral­ly ingest­ed product?

    I sup­pose that is a nice way of ask­ing what else is in the prod­uct besides Car­nau­ba Wax that we would need to be con­cerned about from a reg­u­la­to­ry sta­tus sit­u­a­tion where we would have to dis­close all chem­i­cals that might be found in trace quan­ti­ties upon analysis?

    Ira Hill
    Co-own­er, White­Hill Oral Tech­nolo­gies, Inc.

  3. Dear Dr. Ira Hill,

    It is a nice way of ask­ing indeed, and in return I will offer a nice answer! 

    There are only three ingre­di­ents in the MJ Gor­don Car­nau­ba Wax:
    1 — Water (Approx. 69% by weight)
    2 — Dimethyl Ether (Approx. 30% by weight)
    3 — Car­nau­ba Wax (Approx. 1% by weight)

    The Dimethyl Ether is used as the pro­pel­lant (non CFC of course). As far as dis­clos­ing chem­i­cals for reg­u­la­to­ry pur­pos­es, of course we must also com­ply. The com­plete Mate­r­i­al Safe­ty Data Sheet (MSDS) for Gor­don’s Per­masil #808 Car­nau­ba Wax Mold Release
    (Blue Label) can be found on MJ Gor­don’s Web­site.

  4. Dear sir very use­ful infor­ma­tions about car­nau­ba wax as a mold releas­ing agent, i want to use car­nau­ba wax in aerosol as a fur­ni­ture pol­ish please guide me for this appli­ca­tion. Thank you.

  5. Muham­mad,

    Car­nau­ba Wax has many appli­ca­tions and as you have under­stood, CAPLINQ are experts in the use of Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Sprays as mold release agents for semi­con­duc­tors and oth­er crit­i­cal applications.

    Though Car­nau­ba Wax is used in fur­ni­ture pol­ish, it is often one of the raw mate­ri­als used in com­bi­na­tions with bee wax (as described here) due to its high­er melt­ing point, and not as the sole ingredient.

    We do not pro­fess to know if Car­nau­ba Wax alone is suit­able as a fur­ni­ture pol­ish, but if you have pre­vi­ous­ly suc­cess­ful­ly used a sol­id ver­sion of car­nau­ba wax for this pur­pose, then an aerosol ver­sion is avail­able in one of our MJ Gor­don’s Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Sprays.

  6. Do you think we can use car­nau­ba wax in aerosol to seal cop­per jew­el­ry? We are des­per­ate try­ing to find a way to make anti tar­nish cop­per jew­el­ry. Thank you very much

  7. This is a ques­tion we can’t answer. If car­nau­ba wax is what you need to make an anti-tar­nish prod­uct, then yes. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t have much exper­tise in the area of jew­el­ry mak­ing, so we can­not advise whether car­nau­ba wax (aerosol or oth­er­wise) is suit­able to your process.

  8. Dear Sir /Madam,
    Could you tell me whether the Gor­dons Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosols com­ply with the Euro­pean Aerosol Dis­pensers Direc­tive 75/324/EEC, there is no infor­ma­tion on the cans like the reversed epsilon to say they do.

  9. I’m sor­ry, I am not 100% sure whether the MJ Gor­don Car­nau­ba Wax #909C Green does or not. We do sup­ply it exten­sive­ly through Europe and use PostNL (for­mer­ly TNT Post) for deliv­ery with­out any issues.

  10. Hel­lo Sir/Madam,

    Could you tell me if Gor­don car­nau­va wax has an effect on plas­tics or met­als when using on the tem­per­a­ture ranges 180–190 degress cel­cius? Because recent­ly 1 of the prod­ucts in the com­pa­ny that I was work­ing encoun­tered dis­col­oration on the base­plate of the­p­rod­ucts. I am won­der­ing if car­nau­va wax has an effect on the prob­lem that encoun­tered recent­ly or if exces­sive appli­ca­tion of car­nau­va wax has an effect while the prod­ucts was soaked at the M‑pyrol solution.

  11. It is very unlike­ly that the car­nau­ba wax caused any dis­col­oration. It is used often on all sorts of plas­tics and met­als, and there is no inter­ac­tion between the two that would cause dis­col­oration. What is more like­ly is that the SOLVENTS with­in the car­nau­ba wax spray could have caused this. Car­nau­ba wax itself is non-aggre­sive, but it is a sol­id. In order to make this prod­uct liq­uid to be able to apply it, it needs to either be heat­ed up, or emul­si­fied, which is a process that adds sol­vents to make the car­nau­ba wax liq­uid at room tem­per­a­ture. The prod­ucts we sell con­tain a non-flam­ma­ble sol­vent to emul­si­fy the car­nau­ba wax which has a sim­i­lar neu­tral effect on plas­tics and metals.

  12. Hi,

    We have encoun­tered vis­i­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion on the base­plate after soak­ing to heat­ed M‑pyrol and the only mate­r­i­al added dur­ing mold­ing the is the car­nau­ba wax(aerosol). Can M‑pyrol wash-off car­nau­ba wax? I have read that M‑pyrol is a poly­mer­iza­tion medi­um for poly­ester, would this mean that instead to be removed car­nau­ba wax tend to make a poly­mer/chain/cross-link that adhere on the baseplate?

  13. It is not impos­si­ble that the car­nau­ba wax is absorbed into the matrix of the prod­uct upon cure. Typ­i­cal­ly, car­nau­ba wax is used in a num­ber of ther­moset mate­ri­als to pro­vide a “self-release” mech­a­nism to release the ther­mo­plas­tic after cure. How­ev­er, the lev­els of car­nau­ba wax used with­in these mate­ri­als is nor­mal­ly quite low, much less than 1%. In aerosol form, the car­nau­ba wax is present local­ly at a much high­er lev­el, so it is unlike­ly that it is all absorbed into the M‑pyrol matrix. This said how­ev­er, we do not have expe­ri­ence with M‑pyrol, so we can com­ment on this spe­cif­ic sub­stance specif­i­cal­ly. Hope this helps you fix your issue.

  14. Ezer Neil T. Natividad / Fuji Electric Philippines Inc. / Equipment Engineering / Maintenance Section says:

    Hi! does your prod­uct is real­ly safe? because I saw in the label that your prod­uct is con­tain­ing a chem­i­cal which is known to the State of Cal­i­for­nia that is caus­ing birth defect and oth­er repro­duc­tive harm to human.

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